The Colors of Living Alone
by reagancrew
Summary: Professor Helena Wells has lost something more precious than all the world. Can a certain Secret Service Agent help her find her way back to the living? Or will she be lost in the darkness of her past? Multichapter AU: Bering and Wells. Disclaimer: I don't own Warehouse 13 and whatnot.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own Warehouse 13, etc. etc.**

**Bering and Wells are proving delightfully annoying lately and I cannot seem to get them out of my mind. Let me know what y'all think. **

* * *

She isn't quite sure how she's come to be where she is, seated on this wooden bench in the middle of the park, her arms wrapped tightly around her torso. She wasn't aware of where she was going when she'd left the house that afternoon, knowing only that she needed to get out, get away from the shadows and the lingering whispers. When she blinks, it is almost a surprise that the grass, the trees waving their leaves softly above her head, the solidness of the wood beneath her, these sensations do not vanish. Things have a tendency to disappear in front of her these days, slipping away before she can fully capture them. Her hands have become weak and useless. She can no longer trust her senses, the smells and sounds and sights reaching her.

But not, today. Today, the chill bite of an early autumn wind does not turn into the stifling stillness of her empty house. Today, the shrill shrieks of children on the nearby playground do not fade away into half remembered chiming laughter or the crystalline voices of young girls in the backyard. Today, she blinks slowly, heavily, and the world swims blearily into focus just as it was a moment ago. Today she is present. She hates it.

She would much rather remain unaware, wrapped in her own mind, her own memories. But that place is also terrifying and dangerous, and she finds that her greatest desire while trapped there is to flee. But this: being aware, comes with its own heartaches. She wonders, idly, why her body has dragged her to this place, so near to the playground. Each call of young voices, each yelp of joy, pierces her skin, sliding easily and painfully inside her to cause her heart to shrink back in fear and agony.

* * *

_"Mummy, watch!" _

_ "I'm watching, darling." She waves lazily in the direction of the young girl, attention focused on the papers in her lap. She should have graded them the night before, but Christina insisted on three bedtime stories, and by the time the young girl's breathing had evened out, she'd found herself drifting off to sleep as well, lulled into oblivion by the warmth of the small, perfect body curled into her own. _

_ "Did you see? Did you see me fly?" the seven year old is panting in excitement as she skids to a stop beside the blanket her mother is sitting on._

_ "I did," Helena pauses to beam up at the smiling face blocking the sun. _

_ Christina grins at her, all cocky charm and self-confidence. Her mother can't help but give herself a rueful shake. The headstrong nature of her daughter will surely come back to bite her someday, when Christina is old enough to feel embarrassed of her mother as all teenagers eventually do. "Oh! There's, Paul!" and the young girl lifts an arm to wave wildly in the direction of a boy her own age. He shouts hullo and gestures for her to join him on the play structure. "May I?" she clasps her small hands together sweetly._

_ Helena laughs gaily. "Fifteen more minutes. Go on then," and she reaches out as though to give the child a good natured push towards her friend, but the lithe form has already danced away, racing down the hill with her arms flailing. The mother holds in the desire to shout after her reckless child, 'Be careful! You are not invincible, my darling.' But, she's just a girl. She'll learn soon enough. And for now, it is enough to know that if she does stumble and fall, she'll still allow her mother to run to her and pick her up, kissing away the ache of a bruised knee. For now, it is enough that she is as free as a bird. Caution will come later. So, instead, the brunette watches her daughter flying down the hill, arms pinwheeling, not a care in the world, and she smiles at the wondrous sight._

* * *

She hears the shouting of the children, and although she cannot see them, she feels the cracks in her heart tremble at the uninhibited noise. She should not have come here. She clenches her hand into a fist, not releasing until she feels her nails break the skin. The pain grounds her, allows her to focus on something other than the sounds echoing over the hill. She does not understand why she has come, why her feet have dragged her here while her thoughts were elsewhere. But she finds that she cannot leave. And she realizes that this is the third...fourth?...day in a row that she has taken a seat on this bench. She does not have the strength to stand and make her way back along the boisterous streets, full of sights, and sounds, and people going about their daily routines. People living. She feels her stomach physically clench at the thought of returning to the house that was once her home. That empty shell of a building, where memories hide under rugs, tripping her up unexpectedly, coming out of opened cupboard doors or forgotten books lying half-read in the library. She cannot stand that place.

The telltale sign of imminent tears arrives: a prickling at the edges of her vision, the horrible lump in her throat, the ever present ache in her chest grows until it feels as though gravity has suddenly increased its hold on her. She refuses to give in, staring unseeingly at some far off place until the prickling recedes. She does not cry. She has not cried. Not once. It is not normal, perhaps. But, she refuses to allow the tears to fall. Refuses to allow the salt water to meet the open air, instead letting it to trickle down, back inside her, filling up her heart and her lungs, until she's drowning from the inside out, silently painful, but much less messy. It's easier this way. She thinks it is. Or perhaps its that much more difficult. Either way, she refuses to allow the hurt in her chest to manifest itself in such a physical way. That would be giving in, something she will absolutely not do.

Instead, she counts her heartbeats and examines the patterns of spidery veins on the leaves at her feet. Instead, she studiously ignores the pounding feet on pavement which signal a runner or walker passing her by. Instead, she welcomes the solidity of the old wood she is resting upon. Instead of tears, she allows herself to indulge in memories of autumns long past.

* * *

_The two year old is bundled up tightly, ladybug hat snuggled firmly down over her brown curls. Her cheeks are glowing in the late afternoon sunlight. It's nearly dusk, and perhaps they should be inside, having bath time and getting ready for bed, but she couldn't ignore the brisk autumn chill. It is officially fall: her favorite season, when the trees shed their leaves in reds and oranges, and the earth gets hard and cold in preparation for impending snow. When blankets pile up at the foot of the bed, and windows are cracked at night to let in the smell of frozen precipitation that tends to hang over the town like an old friend. Fall is the time of tea and lazy mornings, of pancakes and syrup. Fall is the ground holding its breath before the storm, waiting in anticipation for hibernation. Fall is pumpkins, chubby and round, and apples. Fall is perfect. _

_ So she has layered her daughter in a warm coat and leggings, mittens, hat, scarf, and the black shiny tap shoes which the toddler refuses to take off. And they are outside, welcoming the change of seasons with open arms. She's scooped up a pile of the golden leaves under the old oak tree in the back corner of the lawn and Christina has been throwing herself into them with the uncoordinated delight possessed only by those still a bit wobbly on their legs. _

_ "Spin, momma," she orders. Helena grabs the pudgy hands in her own, spinning them in circles, as the colors merge into a kaleidoscope of greens, yellows, and the purple of the sky in the periphery of her vision. Until they collapse, giggling and out of breath in the bed of fallen leaves. Christina clambers up to straddle her mother and, one hand now free of its woolen protection, she pokes the adult on the cheek. "Pretty," she giggles. Her new favorite word. _

_ Helena does not know where she's learned it, perhaps at daycare. But, she repeats it back to the young child. "Pretty," she says softly, sweeping an errant lock of hair from her daughter's porcelain skin. "You're my pretty darling," and she wrestles the toddler back into her embrace, tickling the squirming, squealing two year old until they are both laughing in delight._

* * *

With a jolt, she is back in the park. The grass is turning brown. She'd never realized how dead everything looks in the fall. How dull it all grows. Stifling a shiver, she tucks her hands into the pocket of her old hoodie. The nights reach below freezing temperatures these days, and perhaps she ought to have dressed more appropriately, but she finds that it is a welcome discomfort. So she remains still.

Glancing up, she tracks the progress of a woman running along the path, iPod plugged in, her long strides eating up the pavement beneath her feet. And, there is a father jogging, a stroller pushed in front of him, the waving arms of an infant poking up over the side. She bites back the jealousy that rises in her gut, and turns away, shifting her focus in the other direction.

There she is. Its the same woman every day at exactly this time. She passes the stationary woman quickly, her gaze fixed straight ahead, unseeing. She does not listen to music while she runs, and Helena wonders what she is so completely focused on. She wonders what color the woman's eyes are, always looking so far away, so determined. The woman's raucously curly hair is pulled back, her back straight as she passes, her stride long and lean, but there is the hint there of barely controlled motion, as though gangly limbs are aching to fall out of place and move in all directions. It is a graceful, disassociated movement. There remains in her stride the hint of an awkward, fumbling girl, who grew into her body too quickly, and has yet to settle herself into the way her feet connect with the ground and the way she passes through the air. She finds that her entire concentration is focused on this woman, entranced by the way her body slides through the atmosphere, eyes drawn to the steady set of the shoulders, the heavy, inward gaze. She is fascinated, and has been for the past several days.

This woman provides a momentary distraction from her own inward thoughts. And Helena follows the stranger's trajectory, as one might a shooting star streaking across the heavens. Today, however, she does not escape unnoticed, because just as the runner is coming upon the bench, she kicks a small stone, and as it skitters out of her way, her concentration is shaken. She glances down, as though to reassure herself that she is in fact still in motion, and when she looks back up, she meets the watchful gaze of the woman on the bench.

Her eyes are green, Helena realizes. The green of sunlight through a blade of grass. The green of the moss creeping along the forgotten remnants of an old foundation in the middle of the forest. Green which makes one think of half-buried, growing things poking shyly out of the earth's brown skin.

A flash of green so brilliant it reminds Helena for a moment what singing used to sound like. Before.

Well.

Before.

A flash and then it's gone, but not before the woman, gives her a smile. Soft and fleeting, and she thinks that maybe she could smile back. Maybe. If she could only recall how. And then the green is gone, and with it, the remembrance of the warmth of spring, and the woman is gone, running on and on, forever onwards, past her, seated and unable to rise. She presses one hand to her chest, forcibly reminding herself of the feeling of her own body, her own flesh and the blood moving sluggishly beneath a thin veneer of control and calm.

She does not see the glance the runner throws over her shoulder one hundred yards later. She does not see the way the brunette stumbles, elbows askew, as she loses control of her body for a moment to look back. She does not see the wonder in those green eyes. The realization that this woman, seated on a bench, has been there before. She does not notice that the runner has suddenly deduced her emptiness, is now curious about the sadness that rolls off of her, unknowingly, in waves.

All she sees is a child, laughing in the green grass of the summertime.

* * *

_"Mummy," there is awe in that tiny voice._

_ "Mmm?" she murmurs in response, the heat of the day making her sleepy._

_ "Mummy, I can hear it. I can hear it beating."_

_ "Yes, darling."_

_ "That's your heart," and a small head lifts to look at her mother seriously, brown eyes meeting twinkling brown. _

_ "How's it sound, my love?" _

_ "Strong."_

_ "Well, that's a relief," she sighs into the sunshine. _

_ Her daughter giggles and taps her on the chest. "Does my heart sound like that? Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Like that?"_

_ "Well, let's see shall we?" The mother sits and rolls them, placing her ear delicately to the little chest beneath her. She waits several seconds, originally playing along, but finding herself actually listening. Reveling in the pulsing of her daughter's heart. _

_ "How's it sound, mummy?"_

_ "Strong," she whispers and then clears her throat. "Strong and steady, sweets," she grins broadly at her child, whose stomach takes that opportunity to growl loudly. "As does your tummy. Lunch time," she orders gaily, allowing the tiny human to pull her to her feet. _

_ "Grilled cheese? Oh, please, please, please!" _

_ She couldn't resist that look even if she so desired. "Grilled cheese it shall be. Lead on, fair one." Her heart beats in time to the smaller one as the child slips a hand innocently into her mother's firm grasp. "Lead on."_

* * *

It is nearly dark before she forces herself to move, rising stiffly from the bench, whose wood now feels hard and unforgiving against her sore muscles. She shuffles off, thankful for the darkness cloaking her in its anonymity, for the way it spreads over everything, dampening the sounds of folks making their way home after a long day, of the cars on the street. She enjoys this time now. This hush. The droning hum of the earth settling into itself as night makes its way in, racing on the heels of a sedately setting sun. It helps to tune out the memories still attempting to force themselves onto her consciousness, still trying to make her feel. To hurt her.

She revels in the fading daylight. In the way everything about her begins to slow down, even as the earth never ceases in its endless rotation. As she exits the park, she looks over her shoulder, just able to make out the silhouette of the empty bench. She heaves a heavy sigh. Tomorrow. She'll be back tomorrow, no matter how hard she attempts to avoid it. This is the place she runs to. The place she returns to. It is both peaceful and hurtful, and she cannot stay away. But there is nowhere else to go, no place else to be, no place to sit, free from the pitying looks of those who know her, knew her. No where free from the words whispered around coffee mugs, the consoling pats on the shoulder that make her desire a scalding shower and a new, unfeeling skin. Tomorrow. Yes, she'll be back tomorrow.

She shuffles home. Although now it is simply a house that sits, windows glaring out into the empty street, with a forlorn porch swing swaying in some nonexistent breeze, and a few numbers on the door that proclaim that someone occupies its halls. Although occupation might be stretching it a bit far, she thinks ruefully, flipping the lock behind her and moving through the rooms without bothering to flip on a light. Occupying space suggests living, suggests breathing and feeling and seeing, none of which she consciously bothers with any longer. It's been months since she's actively considered the ramifications of what it means to take the title 'living' for herself, but she is quite certain that she no longer belongs in that category. Not since.

No. Not since then.

Now she is simply matter. Taking up space. With weight and mass. Although some days she even finds herself questioning that. On days when she feels lighter than air, floating above the floor, on those days she questions even the idea of her atomic structure. She is familiar with atoms, with molecules, how they work and associate. Once upon a time she might have been considered brilliant. But she no longer believes in the properties of matter, because the truth that it can be neither created nor destroyed is a lie. It is a lie. Because she is both created and destroyed on a daily basis. With every breath she continues to take she is both present and not, lighter than she might be on the moon, but buckling under the pressure of more than ten kilometers of salt water. And if it were true that matter could be neither created nor destroyed, if this wasn't just some foolish dream of scientists and people hoping for absolution and searching for peace, then that brown haired, brown eyed girl would still be curled up on the sofa, asleep in all her innocent perfection.

Therefore, it must be a lie. A wish fools tell themselves late at night under the cover of a million stars, but a fact she refutes with every beat of her heart and pulse of blue blood through her veins. Matter can be destroyed. If one is careless, fumbling. It is more delicate than one might imagine. And its permanence is fleeting. She knows that to be a truth more honest than any other. Nothing is immortal. Not even matter.

She glides on silent feet through the kitchen. There is food available, but the light from the fridge is harsh and intruding in the blackness of the house, and so she bypasses it. She strips unreservedly and slides naked between sheets, the cool white cotton accepting her skin as one might accept the bite of snow down one's jacket. It is not relief that she feels here. It is agony in its purest form. Because now, now that she is protected from the glare of the world, she prepares herself for the onslaught of emotion that accompanies the night, pulled to her aching heart as the moon pulls the waves upon the sand.

* * *

_There is the pitter patter of size 4 feet on wooden floorboards which portends the slow opening of her bedroom door. "Bad dream?" she lets out softly and feels rather than sees her daughter's nod from across the room. "Come on then," and she pats the mattress, pulling back covers to give the small child entrance. She'd promised herself she wouldn't be the type of parent who allowed her child to sleep in her bed, but that had gone the way of most of her fervent parenting style promises. "Cold," she mutters at the feeling of icy toes on her warm leg. The little one doesn't respond, but wraps herself around her mother, grip surprisingly tight for one so small. "Shhhh," she soothes automatically, rubbing a hand along a small back, knowing better than to ask what the dream was about. Little minds don't work well this late at night. _

_ She places a feather light kiss on messy curls, and holds her daughter tighter to her chest. After nightmares, her arms are transformed in order to become stronger than any armor and more powerful than dragons. Her chest is the softest pillow. Her voice the best lullaby. She did not recognize the power of a mother's body until her daughter cried for her after bad dreams. She did not realize that along with the title 'mummy' came the ability to banish bad guys and hold the evil forces at bay for years at a time. She was not prepared for the role of protector and fairy godmother rolled into one, and although it is terrifying to know that your child pictures you as home base and your arms as both her safety net and her kite string, it is also one of the most wonderful feelings in all the world. _

_ To fall asleep with the heavy weight of a content, sleeping, safe child in your arms and to awaken just the same. To find bright eyes staring back at you, delighted simply that the sun has risen once more and the birds have come out to play and because, "It's Saturday, mummy! Cartoons!" To fall asleep whole and awaken fuller than before sits lightly upon the soul in all the right ways. So she presses her daughter to her chest gently, removing invading nightmares with one sweep of her fearsome paw, and welcoming the entrance of easy sleep and peaceful dreams, before falling once more into her own imaginative oblivion._

* * *

When she jerks awake, breathing hard, sheets now tangled around her legs, trapping her, the clock reads just past four, but there will be no more nightmares this night. She scrambles off the bed quickly, hating the way her skin is clammy and uncomfortable, and it is with practiced madness that she enters the shower when it is still freezing cold. The gasp that shudders throughout her entire body is a welcome reprieve from the images still clinging desperately to the edges of her mind, trailing out from sleep's fierce hold. But it is the pounding of the spray against her temples which reminds her that although those nightmares were once real, they are past terrors, and the now is here, with water sharper than knives and colder than ice. It is another day already, and although time seems to speed and slow at will, although sleep passes in an agony of seconds, this is a new day. She opens her eyes to stare at the white wall of the shower, but all she can see is red. It was red once. That day. No. She closes her eyes. Reopens them. White. Porcelain. That's better. Yes. The shower is white. Not red. Slowly, she turns the knob of the faucet until the water jetting from the nozzle is hot against her chilled skin, until she is burning beneath its downfall. But that is better than seeing the red. With the heat, she can focus on the white walls and hold them steady. White: a combination of all the colors of the visible spectrum. The walls of the shower are white, and it is another day. Already.

* * *

**AN: What'd y'all think? Continue? This one is just ready and waiting to make its way out onto the page. **


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I don't own Warehouse 13.**

**AN: Chapter 2. For your viewing pleasure. Thoughts? **

* * *

She does not answer the phone when it rings for the second time in as many hours. The answering machine picks it up, projecting the high pitched voice of one of her colleagues from the university just calling to, "Check in!" in an overly cheerful way. The sound waves bounce down the hallway to find her where she is seated in the kitchen, cup of coffee on the table in front of her. It is black. Black like she imagines the night sky would be if all of the stars were to simultaneously wink out of existence. She used to drink tea. But tea is a comfort drink. She does not desire to be comforted. She does not deserve it. So instead she has substituted coffee, cups and cups of it, every day. She craves the way it scalds her throat, biting and harsh, and she gulps it quickly, refusing to savor it.

This cup though, in its white mug, porcelain and smooth and unblemished, sits forgotten by her elbow, cold now. She is not aware of time passing her by, of dawn slipping into early morning, into almost afternoon. She stares at the sock on the table in front of her. It is small and pink and there are green frogs grinning mockingly at her from the cotton item. She'd found it stashed beneath the long table in the hall, forgotten, without its pair, and she has been unable to turn her gaze away from it.

* * *

_"Mummy? Where do socks go?"_

_ "Whatever are you talking about?" She slides the lunchbox into the ninja turtles backpack that Christina had insisted upon that August. The girl child had lectured her mother endlessly while they'd been shopping for school supplies about the negative effects of having all 'girl' things. 'I need some color, momma,' she'd insisted, hand on her tiny hip. She found herself smiling at the memory, before running through the mental list of things to accomplish before they could leave the house that morning. _

_ "Where do they go? I'm always missing one," and when Christina tugs on her mother's shirt and points to the floor, Helena follows her finger to see that her daughter is, indeed, wearing mismatched socks. One is black and orange striped and the other is pink with smiling bullfrogs. _

_ "Well, I suppose they got lost in the dryer. Misplaced."_

_ "But _where _in the dryer?" Christina rolls her eyes in a perfect imitation of a preteen. She's growing up much too quickly. _

_ "I-I don't really know," she's flustered and rushing around trying to get everything ready. "We're already late, sweetheart. You'll simply have to go to school with what you have. Now put your jacket on, please."_

_ "I mean, unless there's a magical land - Oooh! Mummy, do you think there's a magical land just for socks. Like in that book, that one with the lion and the witch-"_

_ "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," her mother supplies."_

_ "'Zactly," her daughter affirms with a quick nod, sliding into her jacket. _

_ "Perhaps," and they're late so she's pushing them out the door and locking it behind them and pulling her five year old towards the car frantically, not paying much attention to the rambling imagination creating an entire world for a few lost socks behind her. _

_ "I hope they aren't lonely."_

_ "What's that, darling?" she asks, searching the street behind them in the rear view mirror before pulling out of the driveway._

_ "The lost socks. Do you think they make friends."_

_ "I'm sure they do," the mother responds reassuringly."Now don't forget the note for the field trip. It's in the front pocket of your book bag, and..."_

* * *

The sock is staring up at her now, taunting her, returned from its jaunt to the Narnia located in her dryer and under her furniture. She can't quite bring herself to put it away or throw it away or do much other than look at it. She can imagine its pair, tucked in the top drawer of a child-sized dresser in a dark room that is probably growing dusty from lack of use. A room whose door remains firmly closed, keeping hidden the secrets of a past full of laughter and joy. Locked away, a key thrown firmly out of reach. Out of sight, out of mind. But this. This puny article of clothing that should have no significance whatsoever, tugs on her as an anchor might, pulling her to the bottom of a sea floor too deep for mortal man. She is weak under the fibers of this item, she has been woven into its pattern and cannot seem to find the thread which would signal its undoing. Instead, it has unwound her, and she is left to stare and remember and feel an echo of invisible tears sliding down her skin, leaving behind the taste of salt.

The phone rings again, screeching loudly, but muffled by the oppressive weight of her grief. She has filled the entire house with it this morning. Letting it soak into crevices and seep into the woodwork. She can feel it curling about her cold toes, hovering over her shoulder, staring with her at a pink sock on a white tabletop. Again the phone rings, and she is moving to answer it before she is consciously aware of her motion. It is more to shut it up than anything else. The, "Hello?" has left her lips of its own accord. She is a puppet, a marionette on strings controlled by the ghost of a four year old's smile and the laugh of a baby and the distressed cries of a child with long eyelashes that hide sparkling eyes.

"Helena? Helena, are you there?" It is her brother. Charles. That is his name. It takes her moment.

"Ye-Yes. I'm here." She is here. The thought burns its way into her flesh. Here. Here. Taunting her. Teasing her. Here. You're here.

"I'm glad I caught you."

Like a fish on a line who has swallowed the hook and sees the end of the tunnel at the bottom of the fisherman's boat and a knife, silver in the dusky light.

"Mhm," her throat is dry, hollow. She has not spoken in days. This revelation brings a sudden jolt of surprise. When did she come to be so silent? The words used to flow from her languidly, with not a care in the world, set free into the open air as easily as a gull swoops through the sky, riding thermals of heat in a glowing ecstasy of purpose. She was a wordsmith. Silver tongue. Glib, charming, intelligent, passionate. Words were her passion. They were her art form, her stamp upon the world, even if they were invisible. And now, she has forgotten the art of a beautifully crafted sentence, a finely tuned paragraph. Now, she is all half-finished phrases and conjunctions. Her prose has become pain and her voice is a melody of sorrow. She is lower case letters and improper punctuation, while words that have meaning and power escape her grasp effortlessly.

"...I was thinking next week perhaps. What do you say?" Charles has continued speaking, unaware of how jealous she is of the ease with which his words come to fruition, quickly, without conscious thought.

She plans each letter carefully, setting it into place alongside its brothers, until the morphemes are in their proper order. "I'm sorry. What?"

"I said," he sighed, "that I was thinking about coming to DC for a few days."

"But, you're in London." Isn't this obvious?

"And planes exist," he points out, a bit affronted. He does not realize that the amount of emotion in her tone is astounding, not something to be scoffed at.

Once, she caressed each word as it slid past her lips, but now, they are sharp. Icicles freezing her with every vibration. "You would have to miss work."

"I can take a few days off!" he rebuts quickly, excitedly. "You could show me around that capital you seem to like so much. Teach me all your American ways." She can practically hear his eyebrows waggling over the line.

"Well, I-" She is not sure how to tell him not to come. To please, please stay away. Lying is more challenging now, as is telling the truth. Everything takes more energy, and she feels as though this conversation has already used up her speech quota for the day. She'd much rather drift into silence again. As she ponders how to properly argue her point in the most economical way possible, she grips the phone receiver tightly, and when the thoughts finally make a physical appearance, she watches as they skip down the phone line and disappear across the thousands of miles separating the siblings. "I'm not sure now is a good time."

"Helena," he sounds firm. "I haven't been to see you in ages, and in all honesty, I could quite use the time away. It'd be fun. C'mon," he is urging her to agree to give in. His voice is childish in its desire.

* * *

_"Uncle Charlie!" The little girl squeals into the telephone. "When are you coming to visit? I'm having my play soon. I'm the lobster! Yes! The lobster!" she giggles. "You promised you'd come see! Mummy and I will pick you up at the airport, and you can sleep in my room on the floor. There's a blanket fort and everything," her words come piling out of her too quickly to be afforded the time they need to dissipate. They are stacked in a haphazard heap by her side, leaking slowly away. "It's absolutely wonderful! And mummy says that when you come, we can go to the zoo and see the giraffes. Have you ever seen one? A giraffe, silly!" She is hyper, her little feet dancing in place. "Mrs. Robbins says they're taller than me. Taller than mommy _and _me put together," this comes out in a whisper as though it is a secret. "So you've absolutely got to come to stay," haughty now, her six year old charm in full force. "And mummy will be ever so happy to see you. She's awfully busy, but I know if you came she'd play with us. And I can show you my dinosaur collection! And the microscope I have in my closet. And my new favorite doll. Her name's Lissy. She's got dark brown hair, just like mommy's. She's beautiful. Have _you_ got a favorite toy, Uncle?" She listens to his response and nods, her entire face lighting up at whatever he tells her. "Well, when you come, they can have a playdate." _

_ Helena hears her brother laughing over the other line. "Christina," she places a hand on her daughter's shoulder, her breath catching at the joy in those brown eyes when the child looks up at her. "Let me talk to Uncle Charles, please. Your lunch is on the table" _

_ "Momma wants to talk to you now. I gotta go. But, I'll see you soon, Unc, okay? Love you, too!" And she tosses the phone into her mother's waiting hands before skidding off towards the kitchen._

_ Helena places the receiver to her ear, shaking her head in response to her daughter's antics. _

_ "She sounds just like you, Hel," he tells her._

_ "I know," she responds ruefully. _

_ "She'll be a holy terror someday."_

_ "Someday? She's already got enough attitude for an entire schoolyard of children. Sometimes I wonder if she's secretly sixteen." They both chuckle. "So when _are _you coming?"_

_ "Flights are all booked. I'll be there next Friday."_

_ "Excellent." _

_ "Can't wait to see you."_

_ "You either. Email me your itinerary?" _

_ "Will do. See you soon, sis."_

_ "Hurry. I'm not sure the six year old can reign in her excitement for much longer." And the phone call ends with a shared laugh at the brilliance that is a child._

* * *

There is no way foreseeable way of deterring him, and honestly, she doesn't feel the energy cost outweighs the benefit. Not now anyway. Not today when there is a sock for a foot much smaller than her own crushing her dining room table. Not today when she is running on only one cup of coffee and her routine four hours of sleep. "Fine," she mumbles.

"Excellent!" he crows. "I'll email you my flight stuff."

The proper response would be one of enthusiasm, but she does not remember how to make her mouth form such sounds. They are trapped behind her rib bones, and filling the empty space that is opening up as her heart disappears. The organ that contains one's love, one's lust for life. She would hypothesize that it is currently shrinking at a rate of approximately two millimeters a day, but in square meters that is two thousand a second, and in droplets of water it is a cloud an hour, and until this rate levels out, she is filling the void with forgotten expressions. It's built in storage space. She appreciates it.

When they hang up the phone, she counts her words before the conversation dissipates from her memory. Twenty-nine and a half. Her throat is sore. Twenty nine and a half. A new record.

* * *

The park is nearly empty. It's a Monday. Or maybe a holiday. She doesn't bother with calendars any longer. No need. Time is merely a human construct to force man into a uniform existence. She scoffs at the thought. It's something one of her students, twenty years old and wiser than all the men of history combined, might have dreamed up. Her students. She finds that at times she almost misses them. Their excited eyes, their ratty sweatpants in a nine am lecture, the red eyed look they shoot her way after a particularly nasty night of drinking. She'd enjoyed working with them, teaching them, learning from them. And in another universe, perhaps she might desire to become their teacher once more. But, she does not have the words for them now. There are no lessons she can provide that they will not learn in their own time. Eventually. Painfully. In the bittersweet, melancholy way life seems to enjoy so much.

If she thought she could make them understand the way silver appears to a child. Precious only because it is shiny, and not because it is rare. Precious because it is in every crayon box and shows up perfectly on colored paper. Precious because it is the color of the sky after it rains. If she could explain that black is merely another name for the absence of light and make them see that this really means full of hidden terrors, she might return. But she has lost the map to literature that will help her to express these colors in black and white ink on musty pages smelling of binding glue and traces of leather. She is without a compass and without a key, and therefore she cannot return to them. The font has become unreadable, swimming in front of her gaze like a fish tank at the dentist's office, always just out of reach, with a sign asking patrons, "Please. Do not touch glass." She cannot communicate with them any longer. Along with her words, she has lost her way.

So, she finds herself in the park on a Monday. A quiet park. There are very few people about. The children at the playground are few, and faint. Mostly babies with their nannies. Young women who chat and laugh about the infants in their care and the contents of their employers' junk drawers. Carefree. They will learn. Those junk drawers will turn out to hold far more than short pieces of twine and pens that no longer work. And the babies will grow into children into teenagers into adults. And the women will no longer be quite so free, but quite more careful. They will learn. Yet, she envies them these moments of unwary delight in pieces of trash that someone has fearfully kept hold of for a rainy day.

She loses herself easily in inventions devised of highlighters devoid of ink, a queen of hearts, two thumb tacks, the receipt for a red wagon, trick birthday candles, and some masking tape. She creates castles in the sky, which, with a proper flick of her wrist come tumbling down around her, always leaving her unscathed no matter where she positions herself. It is frustrating. And so she starts again. Foundation full of holes. Walls that are uneven. A roof of air. Up and down, and up and down. Over and over again, using the clouds as mortar and the exhaust of an already vanished airplane for cement.

* * *

_"Darling, really. I'd love to go out tomorrow, but with the baby, I just don't think it'll work. There's no way that I'll be able to procure a sitter on such short notice. - Mhmmm. - Well, I've never met the girl. You say she's excellent, but, and no offense, darling, I'm just not sure about leaving Christina with a perfect stranger." She glances down fondly at the chubby baby playing at her feet. She figured out yesterday that it is much more fun to tumble the towers to the ground after stacking them. She's discovered gravity and playing God. It's amusing to watch. _

_ "Maybe next weekend? That would give me plenty of time to find someone. - Mmm. - No, not Friday." She checks the calendar again. "I've got the department get together that night. - Saturday? - Yes? - Excellent. How's seven?" She fills in the blank line in flowing penmanship. "See you then. - Mhmm." A click and the phone call is ended, the voice on the other end extinguished, as easy as turning off a light. "Mummy's going out next weekend, sweet girl," she lifts the child into her lap, warm and soft, still all baby fat and chubby limbs. "So, you'll have to be good for the sitter. I don't want any trouble." The little girl wraps a hand in silky hair and gives a gently tug, then squirms to be let down. Her mother complies, watching with eyes crinkled in amusement as the child kicks out with one leg to see her architecture descend into a smoking wreck before her. And then she claps her hands together in delight and goes about resurrecting the building, only to destroy it once more._

* * *

She recognizes the stride pounding on the pavement, the rhythm of the gait. It must be time. Yes. It's her. Running towards her. Was it just yesterday that they made eye contact? Her eyes were green, Helena remembers. She wonders what color her own eyes are now. If they only reflect the dullness that accompanies an empty house, shutters open because there is nothing left to hide. If they have faded to gray in the months that have passed, like water streams out of holes poked in the lid of an aluminum can once used to catch fireflies, but forgotten outside one evening and left to fill up in the rain. She imagines that in place of the tears she swallows, the color has faded from her eyes and from her skin in rivulets. Evaporating out of her pores, swallowed whole by the forever shifting landscape that is the atmosphere.

The woman is closer now, almost within shouting distance. Helena could yell to her. She could throw her arms out wide and rise to stand on the bench she inhabits. To break free of the cement slowly encasing her joints, to proclaim herself as human and not as gargoyle, trapped on some lofty roof and forced to witness the evil entering through its doors, hand in hand with the good, all without any say. Forced to digest the rain water as it sluices down the tiles of an ancient roof, depositing it on the heads of humans too busy watching for cracks in the sidewalk than cracks in the heavens. But she remembers the phone conversation. Twenty nine and a half. All of her words have been used up for the day.

Instead, she stares studiously at the sliver lodged alongside her thumb nail, the point already red and pulsing, and wonders how the small piece of wood wormed itself so effortlessly beneath her skin without her noticing.

The woman is wearing a pink shirt, she'd noticed. Pink. Like the sock. She closes her eyes against the images of embroidered frogs. The riot of color behind her eyelids is pleasing in its complexity, its chaos. Pink, and hugging her tall body tightly.

The sound of running feet is growing closer. She can't help it. She is drawn to study the other woman from behind long lashes like a paperclip is drawn to a magnet. Her cheeks are flushed, her breathing heavy. She is focused inward. As always. Helena wonders if she might teach her how to do that, to shut out the world so completely. At times, she believes it is a skill she has mastered, but at others she feels altogether too present and unable to escape. This woman looks as if she would be a good teacher. Impatient perhaps. Short. Sharp. To the point. But also soft, in a way that is hidden behind a stiff posture and uptight disposition. Soft in the way of sunflowers and pine needles. Soft in a way that reminds Helena of nights spent on a beach, trying to find a way to sleep in the curves of the sand. Molding your body to find the perfect position among the multitudinous grains that wanted to welcome your warmth as much as you desired the sound they made as they slid beneath your blankets.

Helena is so busy imagining this woman as sand, sliding through her fingers, that she almost misses the smile sent her way. They are separated by only ten feet, and the woman is smiling at her, making it feel like ten heartbeats instead. Eyes have returned from their inward gazing. Soft lips have been pulled out of a grimace. There was no errant stone today, no reason for eye contact, for outward to meet inward. But she is smiling. And Helena knows, intuitively, that this smile is for her. Like the dawn upon the sand dunes, glancing off the waves of a blue sea, drawing out the green of the ocean, this smile is for her.

She wants to smile back. Desire. A strange feeling. Something she'd nearly given up on, because desiring something impossible only created more heartache. But this, this curling in her stomach is not pain, it is merely want. She _wants _to smile back. And the thought is so unexpected that she is frozen in indecision and surprise, until the woman is already past, taking her dawn and the sea with her, leaving behind only a few errant grains of sand between the creases of Helena's fingers.

And as the woman disappears around the bend, she feels her muscles contract, lifting her lips, her mouth forming some small semblance of a grin, a bit late, but still present. She reaches up and presses two fingers to her lips, leaving herself with a kiss.

* * *

Before bed that night, she stands in front of the mirror. She does not look at herself. She does not need to see her face or the angle of her hip or the crease of her shoulder blade to read the words written there. All the words she did not say to Charles. All the words she has forgotten. They are inscribed in invisible ink on her skin now. And it is not lemon water and heat which causes them to appear, but a sheet of glass over a silver film. No, she does not read these words. She is not sure she would be able to even if she so desired.

Instead, she stares intently at a pair of pink lips, chapped and rough. Raise. Lower. Raise. Lower. Until she has successfully smiled a total of ten times. Ten. That has to count for at least half a word. Bringing today's count to thirty. Not a record. And she feels sore, yet nearly elated. For her, elated equates to falling asleep instantaneously for the first time in seventeen weeks. For her, elated is five hours of sleep. Until she awakens in a tangled, sweaty, lonely ball. For her, elated is realizing that she remembers how the muscles work in her cheeks the next morning, that she has managed to retain the sand throughout the night, and that the nightmares have not acted as a sieve upon her muscle memory. Up. Down. Up. Down. Ten times. Smiling. That is the name of this action. Smiling.

She does not know why she is practicing this skill that she no longer has any use for. But she is aware that there is a woman who is soft like sand and who has smiled at her for two days in a row, and that she will not allow a third day to go by without returning the favor. Because it is a favor. Smiling. So she practices. She rehearses. Until she can do it successfully with great effort, great care, great precision. But successfully.

* * *

**AN2: Thoughts?**


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Let me know what y'all are thinking. Love.**

* * *

This time, when she rounds the corner, the pattern of her footsteps reaching Helena's ears as if through water rather than air, the woman seated on the bench is ready with her smile. She does not have a mirror with her, but she has, nevertheless continued to practice all afternoon. Up. Down. Up. Down. Squinting at the wooden slats of the bench in concentration. The time had passed quickly; the sun dropping through the sky like Newton's apple from the tree, although it is really the earth that is being pulled away. An illusion. Like all the rest. This...smiling, has managed to keep her focused. When once she was able to concentrate on multiple things: the thesis paper she was grading, the grocery list on the fridge, Christina's piano recital next week, the taste of peppermint, now it is all she can manage to simply focus on this action. It was once a reflex, but reflexes can be forgotten over time, wiped clean out of muscle memory by invading knives of a different sort. Ones that bite on impact and continue to sting long after their mark has faded.

But, she has had other things to do this afternoon than remember. Important things. Practicing. The runner is wearing blue today. Blue like the sky, clear on a chill autumn day. Blue of magical things and a marble with a smoky center held to a child's eye. Blue that makes Helena's muscles contract even before the other woman is close enough to smile in return.

She forces her face to still itself, to assume an expression of blankness. It is not difficult. This is the face she wears to bed in the evenings, the one she assumes as she watches the sun paint its colors across her lawn in the morning. Her first line of defense when she makes eye contact with someone on the street, her invisibleness causing that person to look away before they can become wary of the stranger with eyes that mirror the black of pavement and a hole in the center of her chest, too large to be a mere bullet wound or leftover shrapnel from some long ago battle.

And with the adoption of this expression, or lack there of, she forgets for a moment, why she is _waiting_ on the bench this afternoon rather than simply sitting as she has done for so many days prior. She forgets for ten breaths about the woman with the curly brown hair who has eyes like the forest on the mountain. She forgets for fifteen heartbeats that she has been rehearsing this smile for the past twenty four hours, around cups of coffee, into sprays of freezing water, at the leaf resting against her shoe. But a dog barks and she looks up to find her closer. Close enough to make out the pattern on her running shoes and the blue stitching along the seam of her pant leg. Close enough to see the smile, two lips stretching upwards, transforming a mask of concentration and determination into something accessible. Present.

Here it is. She takes a deep breathe, the hummingbirds in her stomach falling still, perched and waiting. She blinks. Once. Twice. And then pulls her gaze up to meet the one awaiting her. She smiles, small, hesitant, but there. And the other woman grins back even brighter in return, her eyes turning to the green of the moors after a spring rain and before the heather has had a chance to bloom. "Hi," she hears, breathless and quick, two syllables, not one. The first is the word, the second is the smile itself.

And once more she is caught off guard because she has not prepared for this possibility. The woman is gone, knocking Helena off of her axis, setting her spinning in place like one of the cartoon figures from her childhood. The curved lines depicting her motion visible to the child's eye on the screen. She works her lips soundlessly, shocked. She'd smiled. She'd responded appropriately, and now, she finds that she is behind once again.

She has not considered the potential exchange of words. Of the way a voice might sound, heard for the first time, dropped between the rise of one foot and the fall of the other. In a moment too quick for the naked eye to pinpoint. She has not realized the potential two letters have to make the sound of a tree falling upon its mossy bed while no one is there to hear it, or of the bell strapped to a child's bicycle, rung with glee. And it is because the speed of light outpaces the speed of sound, that she is left with an echo and a ringing in her ears. She brings shaking hands up from her lap and places them gently over her ears, blocking out the offending reverberations and stopping the echo in its tracks. Instead, she hears the sea, as one would from a shell, the waves crashing upon the shore. Blue, like the woman's shirt.

* * *

_She is reminded once more of the vastness of the water resting upon the earth's crust as she watches her daughter's tiny body, clad only in a diaper, skamper along the beach. She has a sand dollar in one hand, held so delicately, even as she stumbles along on legs not yet coordinated enough to control her movements. "What've you got there, darling," she questions, striding towards the small figure who is approaching the water's edge._

_ "Back," her daughter proclaims proudly._

_ "Back where, silly goose?"_

_ "Back!" And she winds up as a pitcher might on a baseball mound to throw her find as far as her short arm can send it. They both watch in silence until it disappears beneath the waves. It will return to the shore eventually, born on a never-ending tide, but for now it has been returned, "Back. Home." She explains to the adult that this is, of course, the proper method of beach combing. She looks up to her mother, brown curls stuck to the nape of her neck, as though to ensure that the lesson is not lost on the silliness that is an adult who might collect shells to keep. And the mother nods her approval to show that, yes, lesson received, my darling. _

_ It is chilly still. Not yet summer, but past spring. Too cold for actually swimming, although the sun had come out that morning, warming the sand so it is comfortable enough for bare feet this afternoon. There is suncream plastered to the button nose and across tiny shoulder blades, but the mother doesn't at all mind that when she swings her child up into her arms, some of it smears along her shirt. _

_ "Good throw," she praises, pressing a kiss to a chubby cheek. "Well done, sweetness." _

_ It is Christina's first time at the ocean. They have to come to stay for a weekend. And although the toddler will most likely retain no actual memories of these days, Helena herself cannot help delighting in the wonder that her daughter portrays with every new experience. She kisses the cheek once more, before her daughter squirms out of her arms and back to the sand. _

_ "You it!" Christina shouts, before she takes off at a three year old sprint across the sand. "Buhbye, mumma," she teases, waving a pudgy hand back at the slow poke behind her._

_ Helena laughs. "You better run," she encourages, before taking off at a slow jog. "Come back here, you!" She will chase her daughter as the baby's screams of joy mix with the gulls' clamor from one hundred yards above, and she will let Christina get away, again, and again, until, exhausted, they flop down in the sand together, out of breath, but full of life._

* * *

"Bye," she whispers, removing her hands from her head, missing the sound of the sea immediately. "Goodbye." It is not hello, or hi, or hey. But it is an exhale of the breath filling her lungs, taking the place of where her life used to reside. "Goodbye," and she lifts slim fingers as though to wave to a receding figure in the distance, but gets caught on a pocket of air and freezes half way through the motion. It is easier to return her hand to her lap, unscathed, and trembling. "Buhbye."

Caturanga is waiting for her when she returns to the house that evening. He is seated in the ever empty porch swing, pipe in hand, the embers glowing out of the darkness as a stationary firefly. She'd much rather he disappear, but that would mean she was mad, and, as much as she might desire it, madness will not provide her with an escape.

"You're back late," he observes, when she shuffles onto the porch beside him, taking a seat in the swing and kicking off with one foot, so they begin to rock gently. She does not answer. He will speak, when he is ready. She was his student once, but he has yet to stop being her teacher. His dark eyes study her profile, a shadow only a bit lighter than the night around them. She wonders, for the umpteenth time when he, too, will stop calling on her, as so many have already done.

"I find myself rereading Darwin these days," he comments thoughtfully. "However, I have also been keeping the books of my boyhood on a table beside my bed, and I find that it is those I return to before sleep comes. It's quite silly really," he continues after taking a puff of his pipe. She has always despised the way the smoke of such an item fills a room, choking off all clean air. But here, outside, it seems to mix with the scent of recently mown grass and decaying underbrush. It is natural. And, if she would allow it to be, it might even constitute comfort.

"There are so many wisdoms in the books of our youth," he goes on, as though he has not noticed her attention wavering between the big dipper above them and his tobacco curling through around his words.

* * *

_"One more? Pretty please," she cannot resist that smirk, so like her own. She reaches blindly for the top of the stack, missing the first time, but successful on her second attempt._

_ "_Owl Moon," _she begins, and pauses to allow the child to settle herself more firmly against her mother's side. They are pressed tightly together on Christina's small bed. It is late. The girl should already be asleep. But, Helena enjoys these nightly readings nearly as much as her daughter, and although Christina has her top ten favorites memorized, she lets the words wash over her without interrupting. Soothing, calming. And Helena feels her own muscles grow easy in the peace, letting go of the pressures of the day, sinking back, once more, into the images of imagination and wonder that make up these picture books. _

_ "It was late one winter night, long past my bedtime," she giggles when Christina pokes her with an elbow, but she does not release her serious voice, "when Papa and I went owling. There was no wind. The trees stood still as giant statues. And the moon was so bright the sky seemed to shine. Somewhere behind us a train whistle blew, long and low, like a sad, sad song..."_

_ "Goodnight, sweet girl," there is no response from the still form, a lump in the bed, sprawled across the entire expanse of her sheets. The moonlight shining through the window glows off of her daughter's pale skin. The curtains are pulled back to allow the sight of the street lamps glinting off the snow to warm the room. It is wintertime, and Helena can feel the weight of the snow laying upon her shoulders as it lays upon the earth, covering houses and resting atop trees. It is a welcome pressure. A release from the heat of a long summer, and the brilliant color of another autumn come and gone. The city has gone into hibernation, the flowers are tucked away, the rain has turned to snow, fat fluffy flakes that stay on noses and eyelashes. And although the world seems to have grown dull, she adores the shock and visual stimulation of a red hat popping out from the snow bank, of a million crystals reflecting the light of the sun, of the night that is not truly dark when there are stars to count and a moon that matches the glow of the snow. _

_ "Sweet dreams, my love."_

* * *

"I hear that Charles is coming to visit," and she wonders for half a moment where he has heard this, before realizing that her brother must have emailed him. There is no way to deny it.

"Yes."

"Soon?"

"Friday," but she is not sure if Friday is soon or far away.

"I see," he puffs on his pipe a moment, not answering her unspoken question, and she stretches her fingers apart until the webbing between them creaks in agony. She sighs and lifts her feet, hugging her knees to her chest.

"We are quite fragile things. We humans," her teacher murmurs.

She agrees, but does not quite know how to say so.

"And grief, well. Grief is quite liable to tear our carefully constructed lives to pieces."

She swallows the tears that form automatically at his words. She does not want to discuss grief. She lives with it, it is her constant companion. There is no need to give voice to its presence. It spoons her in its cloying embrace each night, and attempts to keep her under as she struggles to awaken each dawn. It holds her hand while she crosses the street, and chains itself to her ankle each afternoon while she takes up sentry in the park. She does not need this man to explain to her the process that is grief, the physical manifestations it is capable of assuming. She is intimately connected to it, more so than any other lover she has ever entertained. It owns her, body and soul, and she revels in the scars it leaves on the inside of her skin, across her chest, pressed into her teeth and bones.

No, she does not need Caturanga to give voice to her grief. And, so she stands and unlocks her front door, disappearing inside. He does not get up to follow her. She rests her back against the glass until she hears his quiet footsteps disappear down the porch, the sound of his car starting, tires pulling away. He will be back, but not for many days. He will leave her with his words, and his pipe smoke, until she is blue in the face from lack of oxygen, and then he will be back.

* * *

She dreams that night of dragons swooping along the coast, white cliffs rearing into the heavens. She dreams of a woman with a voice that is a melody and a smile that is a thousand stories. She dreams of pipe tobacco in a Southern night. She dreams of bike riders at midnight, learning to fly. She dreams of owls and fathers and the sound of a train, long and low, letting loose the sadness of all the mothers with all of their missing children into the abyss. She dreams of men cloaked in the blue of a king's robes, and then of men in the blue of the sea, and finally the blue of the line of sky above the night and below the day. And it is these men that she dreams of in relation to a child with trusting brown eyes and a penchant for mischief. Until her dreams are the white of porcelain and a red that is only capable of existing as it is pumped from the heart of a human being. Red that has drenched the corridors of her mind until she does not remember which way is up and which is down and she is left gasping for air in a stairwell that goes nowhere. Red that is hazy on the edges of her vision when she sits upright on the floating planet that is her mattress, drenched in sweat and shivering in her bare skin, white and clean in the square of moonlight reaching her through a pane of glass.

She does not shower. She does not open the bathroom door. Instead, she wraps herself in the sheet of her grief and strides firmly down the hallway. But she is brought to a halt by the white door, firmly closed against intruders. She rests one hand upon its surface, tracing the outline of a sticker placed there by tiny hands. Winnie the Pooh, and his jar of honey. She leans forward to put her head against the hard wood.

* * *

_"Darling, have you seen mummy's black jacket anywhere, the one with- oh." She is brought up short by the vision presented to her. Christina, in a white dress and white stockings and white shoes has her hair pushed messily out of her face with a white headband. She is seated at the tiny table beside her dresser, bear in the seat to her left and t-rex to her right. She is holding the tea pot in one hand and she looks up at her mother's intrusion into her imagination._

_ "Tea, mummy?" She invites sweetly, gesturing to the seat across from her. _

_ Helena represses a smile and sweeps a deep and impressive bow instead, causing her daughter to laugh outright, before she claps a hand over her mouth and sits straighter in her chair. "I would be delighted," Helena responds, primly situating herself in the plastic seat, knees pulled up almost to her chest. _

_ She watches in fascination as the five year old, only ten days away from six, pours tea for her guests without breaking character. She plays the hostess effortlessly. "We were afraid you weren't going to make it," Christina chides the adult gently._

_ "Yes, well. I am _terribly _sorry for my tardiness," her mother apologizes. "This is absolutely delicious," she indicates the drink in her hand._

_ "It's cham-uh-mile," Christina pronounces carefully, yet incorrectly. _

_ "So it is!" _

_ "It's Frederick's favorite."_

_ "Frederick?" Helena asks with a raised eyebrow. _

_ The child indicates the bear. _

_ "Ahh, yes, nice to meet you, Frederick," Helena reaches over to shake a stuffed paw. "And who might you be, good sir?" She asks the plastic dinosaur._

_ "Oh, that's Annabelle."_

_ "Annabelle?" It is the most ridiculous name for a tyrannosaurus rex that she has ever heard, but her tone cause her daughter to turn her mouth into a bow shaped pout. _

_ "It's her name."_

_ "And a lovely one at that," she amends quickly. "You have a lovely name, Ms. Annabelle." _

_ Christina giggles, and Helena cannot resist the urge to reach across the plastic table and swipe a finger down a dimpled cheek. "But I think Christina is the loveliest name."_

_ "In the whole world?" The child has asked this question before._

_ "In the whole entire universe," she promises._

* * *

She sinks to her knees, one hand and her forehead still pressed firmly to the door. The weight of the memories within that room are overwhelming. All of the afternoon teas, the bedtime stories, the tickle fights. There are stuffed animals living behind that door who come alive at night. But the closet is full of monsters now where once it was empty and safe for a little girl's wanderings. And the sheets are musty from disuse and the paintings on the walls have come unglued and lie faded and yellowed on the floor. The sunlight does not catch the shine of a polished shoe buckle, and moonlight occupies an empty pillow where once it joined a head of tangled brown locks.

She believes she can hear her heart beating from within that room, locked inside a chest that dwarfs its minuscule measure with its emptiness. It has been taken from within her and placed behind this closed door. She has been sewn up and put back out on the streets, but unable to stray too far from the room where her heart resides. She is on a leash. A tether. And the string is made of iridium wiring that she cannot cut, nor does she wish to, because that would mean stopping her heart and she does not think she could bear to survive without the agony of each individual pulse.

She stares at the floor beneath her and listens to her heart beating, alone, in an empty room. She will rise from this place eventually, she will dress, she will brush her teeth, she will practice her smile in the mirror ten times, she will say, "Hi," twice, just in case, and she will drink coffee until she cannot feel the salt water making its slow way down the back of her throat. She will fill her lungs with the tang of half-forgotten salt water from a seashore on a half-forgotten day. She will recite all of the words of _Owl Moon _in her head, reading them off of the skin beneath her fingertips. She will view the world through a filter of the blue of far away lands and magical places where the feeling of loss does not occupy the rooms of a house. A place where doors do not remain closed and showers are not red and nightmares are scary stories mothers tell their babies while they hold them close throughout the night. A place where the sea is a meter past the front stoop and the forest is only a hop away and the sky is transparent and the sun shares the sky with the moon, and the stars chase you around the backyard like fireflies set free from a jar before the thunderstorm. She will move from this place after an infinite number of her heartbeats have echoed throughout the hall, bouncing off furniture and shattering her rib bones. She will move. But, for now, all she can is listen.

* * *

**AN2: _Owl Moon _by Jane Yolen. Read it. It's fantastic. **


	4. Chapter 4

They fall into a routine. Well, she does, and she believes that it is a mutual, unspoken agreement. Every afternoon, as she sits watch from a green wooden bench whose paint is nearly all peeled away and whose metal stand is corrugated with rust, the woman runs past. And every afternoon, this woman, her brown curls pulled back, leaving her face open and exposed, will shift her gaze from wherever it is in her mind that is drawing those green eyes inward, and she will focus in on Helena. And she will smile when she is close enough for Helena to make out the green of her eyes and Helena will smile in return, shakily. And when the runner is near enough for her to see that there are gold flecks that flicker like spots of sunshine through leafy branches in the woman's eyes, she will say, "Hi." And every afternoon, Helena will almost forget to say it back, but it will come out, rushed, awkward, breathless just as the runner is passing her. "Hi."

This is their routine. Their tradition. And she finds, as the days slip by, that she measures the passage of time by the number of greetings they have shared. And she marks the days off with a red marker in the back of her mind every night now. And that once more, she is aware of the days of the week and the minutes of the hour in a way that she has not been for many, many months. She wonders if the woman knows that their encounters are the only time she stretches her vocal chords throughout the day. She wonders if the runner would care. She thinks, perhaps, she might. But she isn't sure if she wants her to.

They are familiar: these greetings. Tinged with a hint of laughter, as though the runner finds these short exchanges a bit amusing, as one might fondly greet an overenthusiastic child. They are familiar, as one might be with an old friend whose existence one has nearly forgotten about until you run into them in the grocery store between the milk and the bread, pushing the metal cart distractedly in front of you until suddenly, there they are, stumbling into your space. And you're both laughing, and questions fly between the short distance, catching up on a decade's worth of stories in the five short minutes they have to spare before they simply must run in order to pick up their kid from soccer practice and get dinner started. Familiar almost in the manner of lovers reunited after some time away, as one wraps their arms around the other in the middle of the busy airport terminal, a relieved, "Hi," released softly into the other's hair. But this tone of familiarity causes her to blush when she recognizes it and so she pushes it away.

They are familiar with one another, and amused, but underlying it all is the melancholy with which Helena delivers her greeting. The dip at the end of the sentence. Because it _is _a sentence. The dip at the end which causes the other woman to throw a softer smile over her shoulder after she's passed by, a smile that is both encouraging and curious. A smile that says, '_Tell me please, why you sound so sad. Tell me please because I think I'd understand.' _And without knowing quite how, she is aware that the set of this woman's shoulders, the power with which she carries herself, is tempered by a moment much like the one Helena keeps under lock and key. And she feels an overwhelming desire to agree, '_Yes, alright.' _Because where this woman's heart should be, is an empty space that Helena believes might mirror her own cracked façade. They are a pair. She knows this. A strange pair. Strangers. A pair of strangers. But, a pair nonetheless.

It is Friday. Charles is arriving this evening. Thankfully he's offered to catch a cab from the airport, and so she has not had to miss her afternoon in the park. She is terribly afraid of his coming, of the disruption he will bring into her carefully scheduled life. A schedule built around monotonous routine in order to better avoid anything other than the constant ache that is called absence burning slowly through her skin, her organs, her bones. Anything that might cause this slow roasting to speed up.

Change breeds chaos, and she is barely hanging on as it is. Chaos would serve to push her right over the edge of the cliff where she has been forced to construct her new life. And she is not sure that she would survive the fall. Never one to be afraid of much, she finds that heights are now her greatest fear, and that when she dreams of falling, she wakes up only after she realizes she will never feel solid land beneath her feet again. Charles' coming is an annoyance not easily brushed off or avoided. And she is unsure where one might purchase a parachute.

Today is Friday, and as the woman approaches, Helena feels the desire to reach out and trap a slim wrist between her own cold fingers as it passes by growing within her. She is afraid that the warm skin would simply slide through her grasp, seeing as she has grown transparent, no longer corporeal in her seat. But, she is also afraid that the touch would bring the other woman up short, connecting them, tying them together. Entrapping this woman by her side has become both her greatest desire and her greatest fear. The cloak that is her grief desires the taste of this woman's flesh above all others, but it is the one thing Helena refuses to give it. She has been at war. At war with her invisible captor for the past several weeks. Her strength is waning. She folds her hands primly in her lap, squeezing until her knuckles are white in order to avoid making contact.

Even if her desire were not fed by an emotion she has personified to sit as a second consciousness beside her own, she knows that it would still exist. Although at first two letters were a mouthful, she has found that, like with any drug, time has caused her immunity to rise. Two letters is no longer enough. She craves more. Two words perhaps. Three. A name would be the largest hit of all, enough to catapult her to a near euphoric state. The high it might induce. It sends a shiver down her spine, and she is fascinated by the goose bumps that appear on her arms at the thought. Maybe she should have been a drug addict. She ponders this possible lifestyle for twenty heartbeats before tossing it away.

And today, there is the chance, fleeting, yet it exists, that, because of forces outside of her control, namely Charles, she may not assume this same position in the park, a state of nervous anticipation, the following day. There is the chance that he will disrupt her schedule enough to remove her from the routine they have worked out. The hold she has over the reins of her life being easily disrupted. Her grip is weak. Therefore, she wants to reach out, to make contact, because she wants to explain why she might be absent, and she wants to ask, even if she has no right to do so, that their routine might continue, on the other side of the interruption of several, "Hi's."

She spends too long racked by indecision, and before she has had time to make up her mind, to flex her muscles, the woman is upon her. Smile. Nod. "Hey." Gone. Hey. She has changed it up again. More familiar today. Hey.

* * *

_"Hey, Momma," a little voice pipes up from the backseat. They are on their way to the airport to pick up Uncle Charles._

_ "Hay is for horses," she can't resist teasing._

_ Christina pouts. "Dear, Momma," she responds, sarcasm already firmly in place._

_ Helena rolls her eyes. "Dearest daughter?"_

_ "Is Unc older'n you?"_

_ "He is."_

_ "So, he's like your big brother."_

_ "Mhmm." _

_ "You're his baby sister?" She is not sure where the child is leading this conversation._

_ "Mhmm..."_

_ "Momma?"_

_ She sighs. "Christina."_

_ "May _I _please have a baby sister?" It is asked with the sincere, sugary sweetness only a five year old can conjure. _

_ She is at a loss for words for a moment, an event that rarely, if ever, occurs. "Well, where would you like me to find one for you?" She sputters finally, aware that this is not the correct thing to say. _

_ "Sephy said that her momma had a baby. She said a big, white bird brought it allllll the way to their house from the North Pole. Santa sent it!"_

_ She ponders the mixing of these two myths for a moment. Sephy's parents sound a bit unhinged. "Well, I'm not sure we'll be inviting any storks into our home for the time being." She does not tell her daughter that there will most likely never be any younger siblings, that she cannot fathom the thought of loving a child as much as she loves the one in the backseat. That even though everyone says you find it within you to share the love among your offspring equally, from seem deeper place, pulled out of you like a bucket up from a well the first time you hold the new baby in your arms, she does not believe them. Because the amount of love filling her for the brown eyed girl whose tiny hand fits so perfectly in her own, spills out the cracks in her soul on an hourly basis, and she has no extra space to store any more._

_ Christina looks disappointed and slightly put out by her mother's brush off, however. _

_ "But, I'll tell you what," because this is something she has been planning for quite awhile, and now seems as good a time as any to bring it up, if only to bring out her daughter's cheeky smile once more. "While Uncle Charles is here, I thought we might go look at some puppies." _

_ "Puppies?" Christina perks up at the mention of cute, cuddly things, less fragile than a newborn would be. _

_ "And maybe," she catches her daughter's eye in the rearview mirror, "consider bringing one home. Without the help of a bird," she clarifies. There is a woman she has been in contact with for the past several weeks, and a litter of labradors is almost ready. Roly-poly round things, tiny and sweet who love unconditionally._

_ The squeal emanating from the back seat is enough to burst some eardrums. "Yes, yes, YES! And we can name him Henry! Or Henrietta. And she can sleep on my bed. And we'll take walks. And oh, mummy, yes, please! Let's get a puppy!" The excited chatter accompanies them the rest of the way to the airport, and Helena cannot stop smiling at the excitement she has brought to the five year old's face. Her love breaks its bounds once more, racing across her face and warming her to the tips of her fingers and the ends of her toes._

* * *

Helena is left to whisper to a retreating figure, "Hello."

* * *

The taxi door slams, echoing in the quite neighborhood, her brother's booming laugh floats up to where she waits in the doorway. He called to let her know he'd landed. And so she has been waiting for this moment, anxiously, forced to push away intruding thoughts of a woman moving swiftly, gracefully through the park with burning green eyes and flecks of gold.

She has not seen him since -

It has been...awhile. He's arrived late, a delayed flight, and the sun has already turned golden as opposed to yellow and has begun to sink, tinging everything with a slight sepia hue. She wraps her arms around her waist. She should not feel afraid. This is her brother. She has known him since she was ten minutes old.

"Helena, darling!" He declares, bounding up the front steps, as she makes her way out onto cold wood to greet him. "You look lovely!" But this is simply something one says to one's sister when you haven't seen her for ages. He doesn't really look at her, not yet anyway, before sweeping her into a bone crushing hug.

She tries not to flinch at the contact, she tries not to hold herself stiffly in his arms. She has not been touched in months, let alone hugged, her entire body wrapped in the embrace of foreign, living and breathing, matter. He doesn't seem to notice the tension in her muscles however, or the way she does not bring her head to rest upon his shoulder. Instead he gives one last squeeze, before stepping back and holding her at arms length.

And she can pinpoint the exact moment when he understands, the exact moment when his expression goes from one of delight, to one of worry, through a pitstop at pity, to understanding, and then wiped clean into one of attempted nonchalance. She may not be able to create such emotions using her own facial features any longer, but she can certainly still recognize them in others. Like a mask he has not had time to fully prepare, Charles schools his features into one of tempered worry. She does not even have to consider the mask she assumes, plucked casually from the shelf: disinterested removal. She is a master, and he is merely an apprentice.

"Come inside," she leads him through the doorway, and the moment he steps foot in the hallway, she feels the house shift. The foundation, so used to her own flitting footsteps that it has stopped recording her movements, is surprised at the new pulse entering its domain. It is rousing itself, shaking off its slumber, rolling in its bed to greet the new arrival. Dislodging the dust that has gathered in its windowpanes and beneath its floorboards. She empathizes. She, too, has had to disrupt her hibernation for this intruder.

He carries his bag in one hand, black eyes roaming the hallway as they walk. She realizes that she has forgotten to turn on the light when he stumbles on a mote of dust. She curses her own idiocy. She must be more careful.

When they reach the kitchen, she is quick to flip the switch, bathing the room in the stark, unnatural lighting. and while he takes in the room she has presented to him, she stares at the floor. It is bare. There are no dishes in the sink, no artwork on the fridge, no flowers in the vase on the table, no notes posted to the microwave. He must sense the emptiness of a house housing a ghost, because he shifts awkwardly. Quickly, she jumps into motion, her bones screeching at the sudden disturbance. They are used to slow movements, deliberate. This hyperactivity is jarring.

"How was the flight?" she asks.

"Good," he begins, but her attention has already been caught by the glow of the setting sun off the stainless steel of the toaster oven. She lets his words wash over her, clearing out the remaining cobwebs in her brain, filling her ears with sound waves louder than the sea during a hurricane.

"Are you hungry?" Because that is the next question she has prepared, filed away in her brain on note cards. "Proper Conversation Questions in Order."

"I could eat," he admits. "Have you got any tea?"

"No," too blunt. Easy, she reprimands herself. "I have coffee?"

"Oh, no thanks. Beer?"

She shrugs, striding over to open the door to the refrigerator. She scans the shelves with increasing hopelessness. Empty. She forgot. She forgot to go shopping. "Maybe we should call in for something?" She attempts to sound bright and cheerful, but he is already standing behind her, peering over her shoulder, and she knows that he's seen the clean shelves before she can shut the door, cutting off the light.

"What are you in the mood for? Indian? Chinese? I've got some menus here someplace," and she slides open one of the drawers, rifling through its contents fruitfully. The menus have all been thrown out long ago, along with any other scraps of paper in the kitchen.

* * *

_"And two orders of fried rice please," she says into the telephone, the pen in her hand clicking on the hard top of the counter. She glances up at Christina and gives her a wink. The three year old has a pen held awkwardly in her own hand, and she is drawing squiggles on the paper menu, her tongue poking out of her mouth slightly in concentration. _

_ Helena finds that she is filling in the space of the 'e' in 'Jamie's Thai!' She stops. Christina gets this habit of doodling from her. They both do it, leaving behind their illiterate markings on papers and envelopes and lists all over the house. Whenever she is on the phone, she is doodling, and her daughter emulates her immediately. _

_ "That'll do it," she agrees with the person on the other end of the line. "7:15? Great, thanks. Oh, and how much will I owe you? - Mhmm. Excellent." She ends the call, and wanders over to examine the drawing the baby has made. "Forty minutes until supper, darling."_

_ "I'm hungry," Christina responds. "See what I draw?" She holds up the yellow menu for her mother's inspection. _

_ "It's lovely. See mine?" And they both examine one another's doodle art. Christina has scribbled over the entire entree section. Next time she orders Indian, she'll have to ask for a new menu. She smiles ruefully. "You are your mother's daughter, are you not?" She smirks._

_ Christina stands up on her chair and presses a kiss to her mother's cheek, before blowing a loud and wet raspberry. Helena laughs, pulling away, to wipe the slobber off her face. "And a bit of a troublemaker," and she lifts her daughter off the chair to swing her gaily through the air, the setting sun sending colors of red and soft orange through the kitchen window to glint off of Christina's curls, highlighting the golden streaks her mother swears are present. They fly, swooping and soaring, until dinner arrives, and dusk has outstripped the sun, turning red to purple and orange to deep blue._

* * *

"Whatever's closest," he saves her, cutting off her frantic search.

She sighs. She still has the number to the local market memorized. They deliver sandwiches and pizza. And so she orders them food, carefully asking the teenager on the other end for each item that Charles declares he wants, making certain not to stumble over the now unfamiliar words. And while they wait for the food, her brother goes upstairs to get settled in and wash up, and she is left alone to make a cup of coffee for herself and attempt to slow the racing blood pounding through her veins.

* * *

It is after dinner. After Charles has regaled her with tales from his job in the publishing industry. After she has managed to keep him talking with only minimal difficulty for several hours. After he has yawned twice in ten minutes because of jet lag and she has yawned in response once. After dishes have been cleared and she is nursing a third cup of coffee, the black liquid steaming into the clear air, wrapping itself about their heads in a halo of heat, that he begins to study her. His eyes are heavy with fatigue.

"Should we turn in?" She suggests, more so to get his piercing black gaze, so much like her own, off of her. But she is unsuccessful; he doesn't even bother to respond, merely tapping his pointer finger on the table top in thought.

"Have you been seeing anyone?" He asks, breaking the peace.

She opens her mouth and closes it again. He has always had such a way of getting straight to the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter; she nearly laughs at the irony. No, would be the honest answer. No, she has not been 'seeing' anyone, her brother's polite way of asking if she's been seeing a shrink so as not to go mad. She revels in the madness. He must not realize how therapeutic it can be to act a little mad now and again.

She should say no, but unbidden, the thought of the woman from the park pops into her head. Her knowing smile. Their ritual. The fact that someday, someday Helena will learn her name. "Yes," she responds simply, leaving him to interpret that as he will. And, because of her runner in the park, it is true.

He nods, and for a moment she can picture him in a great study, seated behind a mahogany desk with a tumbler of brandy in one hand, pipe in the other. She shakes the image away. "That's good," he says. She wants to scoff, because how could he possibly know what was good or bad. Good or bad? Good or evil? He has been thousands of miles away. He has not seen, has not lived, has not died. But, she does not scoff, instead she merely shrugs, an undignified gesture she has grown rather fond of.

He clears his throat. "You know if you ever want to, mmm, talk. I'm here." He opens his arms as though to present an available front.

She does not tell him that talking is more challenging than walking in a straight line. She does not tell him that words have lost all meaning and that where once sentences bubbled out of her as a brook from an underground stream, now she must dig for each release of sound, each phrase. She does not tell him that his belief in the power of time to heal all wounds is false, that talking does not soothe the invisible ache within her. She does not tell him that in his uncertain kindness, he is merely acting as painful reminder. That by coming here, he has disrupted a finely tuned instrument of disengagement she has been perfecting for six months.

She does not know how to tell him that ghosts are real, but people are not. That being haunted is nothing like having Casper the Friendly Ghost floating over you. That the ghost of a child is the most menacing of all. She does not wish to break the shining glow through which he still views the world. She does not desire to describe to him the way invisible matter feels as it makes its home in your bones, a cat settling into the cushions of your insides, purring so loudly it causes your entire body to vibrate in response. She does not tell him that ghosts are like strays who multiply at night, their yowling keeping you up until you think you might go mad. She does not tell him that at that point, you already are mad, and there's nothing you can do about it. She does not warn him to stay in his bed at night, and to leave the wandering of the halls for her, unless he wishes to suffer a most painful death only to be revived once more with the dawning. She does not tell him that rebirth is a horrendous process and its much better to simply stay dead. She does not tell him about the ghosts because she does not think he will understand that they glow golden in the night and not silver as the stories would have you believe.

Instead, she says, "Thank you, brother," and reaches across the table to touch his hand briefly with her own. "But you must be exhausted. Let's get to bed shall we, and perhaps we can talk more in the morning." He takes the bait, hook, line, and sinker, and leaves her willingly at the base of the stairs with a goodnight peck on the cheek.

And as she slides into her bed that night, she wishes for a night free of ghosts, if only because there is company in the house. It is rude to haunt guests. And perhaps the walls hear her, because that night the only being who haunts her dreams is a tall brunette with a knowing smile and hands of softest silk. A woman whose touch turns her skin to gold until she is a statue under an unspoken spell. A woman whose name she does not know, but who causes her blood to transform into molten metal in her veins. When she awakens in the morning, her limbs are heavy with the half-remembered feel of metal softened by the sun. Metal that is strong enough to cause wars among men, yet soft enough to capture the finger prints of a woman. A woman who she would recognize simply by the way her voice fashions a single word. "Hi." Spinning gold out of nothingness.

* * *

**AN: Thank y'all so much for the follows and reviews. I'm so glad someone else is enjoying this story! Love. **


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has read and commented. Some of you have said that this story has helped you feel not quite so alone, and for that I am more than grateful. Grief is something that unites us all, as humans, as animals. And I am so thankful to be able to touch some of you, to help you, even if it is only through inadequate phrases and awkwardly worded sentences. Love. **

* * *

She_ should be sleeping. It's ten at night and if the past three weeks have taught her anything, it's that when the baby is sleeping, she should be as well. But the sight before her is too arresting to ignore. A baby. Her baby. All ten pounds of her. Warm and soft with a head full of dark brown hair, ten fingers, ten perfect toes. Her baby, with chubby cheeks and a button nose. _Her _baby, one hand placed gently over a button mouth, the other resting on the blanket above her head. _Her _baby looking perfect and whole and absolutely beautiful. She can't quite get over it. _

_ The feeling within her, the warmth filling her up until she's full to bursting is overwhelming. She has never felt this way before. Warring desires to sing and to hide causing her to be arrested in her chair. She has never before been one for long silences or sitting still. She is a doer. She excels at staying busy: thinking, plotting, writing. She is terrible at being stationary. But, this-this _thing, _this tiny human has turned her world upside down. She spends hours in the same position, watching each rise and fall of the tiny chest, every hiccup, each sleepy grumble. She delights in every arm wave, each blink and murmur and cry. She is never satisfied. She is afraid to move, afraid to leave, afraid to sleep for fear that she'll miss something._

_ And although she knows that she must sleep, that the baby monitor, lights glowing red in the darkness, will alert her immediately if she is needed by this puny little life, she cannot tear herself away. She simply sits and stares, waiting for tiny eyes to open, waiting until the first signs of movement signal a waking baby so that she can swoop in and sweep the small bundle into her arms. _

_ She is no longer her own person. She has no autonomy. She is completely attached to this little girl, and she finds that she has no desire to rebel, to struggle against such chains. She has no desire to do anything other than provide everything for this child, her child. To be both mother and friend, protector, nourisher, singer of lullabies, and teller of stories, the strong arms in the dark, and the ones pushing the swing higher and higher. She can see moments laid out before her, before them, stretching off into the distance. First steps, pre-school, a kindergarten kiss with a boy behind the play structure at recess, exams, and tears, driver's licenses, fights, laughter, awards, college graduation, a wedding. Someday there will be a wedding. The thought is terrifying. _

_ There will be a wedding, as long as she does her job correctly. Because this baby will grow into a girl into a woman, a beautiful strong, independent woman, but for now, all that stands between her and the world is a mother with no experience, flying by the seat of her pants, almost too afraid to breathe. Helena is the wall, the barricade, and the world has never seemed quite so evil as it does now, never quite so intimidating as it does when she realizes that she is the first line of defense against it's many terrors. _

_ But she is also the gatekeeper. She is charged with opening the door and letting in the light, with describing to her daughter what the definition of purple is, sharing with her the sunsets and the sunrises. Counting the spots on butterfly wings. Finding the shapes among the stars. Pointing out beauty in the blade of grass, in the pollen left behind on the violet's soft petals by the buzzing bee. She has been given the gift of life, of opening these tiny eyes to all the joy the earth possesses, all the songs, the games, the simple beauty in the way the heat breaks after a summer storm, clouds heavy over the horizon, or the elegance in the lines of the tree's branches stretching overhead. _

_ She is charged with providing love, something she has never truly understood until now. She is charged with making sure this tiny, tiny infant learns the definition of 'unconditional' before she can speak. She is charged with being the constant reminder for this other person that she is strong, that she is beautiful, that she can do all things with humility and grace. She has been chosen as caretaker for another human being. It is both electrifying and exhausting, terrifying and thrilling. _

_ The baby shifts in her sleep, and the mother wonders if she is dreaming. She reaches out a finger and runs it over silky hair in wonder. This will never grow old, this moment, watching her daughter in all her dangerous glory will never not be enough for her. She is more content than she has ever been, more relaxed and more on edge, half afraid that someone will bang through the door at any moment, declare this has all been some terrible joke, there's been a mistake, and take the baby away before she can so much as cry out. But when her daughter calms under her mother's touch, relaxing back once more, she knows that this is not a joke, not some imaginary universe where she is simply playing house. _

_ "You are loved," she tells the baby sleeping peacefully before her, and it is so true that it makes her throat ache. "You are loved, my darling," she leans forward to press the gentlest of kisses to a tiny cheek, inhaling that unique baby smell, "my Christina."_

* * *

"Helena? Helena!" Charles is shaking her back to the present, but it is only with great trepidation that she retreats from the past. She was so happy then. It seems a shame to realize her fears were so well-founded. "Are you quite alright?" He is asking her, and it takes a moment for her to nod in response. She forces herself to stop twisting an invisible ring around her finger.

They are sitting in the park, on her normal bench. She has convinced him that an afternoon walk was in order. Thankfully, he has asked few questions and required little effort on her part to keep the conversation going, as he simply allowed her to steer them to their current position. Things were going relatively well until the woman walked past, baby wrapped snuggly in the stroller pushed before her. The girl, it had, quite obviously been a girl judging by the horrendous amount of pink, had looked so perfectly tiny and beautiful. Helena had nearly cried out at the sight, and she'd been forced to travel through time so as to avoid alarming her brother to her current state.

Memories were easier in such instances. Memories of her own daughter, shiny and new, and small enough to still be considered perfect by all who came into contact with her. Although Helena herself had never been able to see anything other than perfection in her daughter's bouncing curls and bright eyed gaze. So, she'd disappeared into a world where that cherry smile still existed and those ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes were still waving delightedly in the air. Now, Charles was attempting to pull her back, against the current, as though she'd been dropped into the quickly moving stream that was time, except this river was flowing backwards, uphill, and he had the laborious task of towing her back to shore.

She nods to let him know that, yes, she'd made it, she is back on dry land, although her clothes are sopping wet, and causing her to shiver in distress as her body attempts to warm itself. But her feet are no longer struggling for purchase on an ever-changing river bottom and her lungs are not forced to suck in great gulps of half-water, half-air. He had played the lifeguard very effectively. So, she nodded in praise of his efforts and he gave himself a mental pat on the back. Ridiculous man.

"I was just saying," he began again, "that perhaps tomorrow afternoon we might go into the city and take in the Mall, the monuments and what not. What do you think?"

No. No, they mustn't. If only because spending the afternoon in the city meanstnot spending the afternoon in the park. But instead, "Yes, alright. If you'd like," comes out, and she gulps after the words have left her traitorous throat.

He beams.

She shifts awkwardly in place, and glances around them. There she is, looking lovely as always. Helena feels her breath get caught in her chest, snagged on some invisible hook. Lovely. She has not considered that this as an appropriate adjective for the woman until today, but it is quite true. It is somewhat cloudy this afternoon, overcast, and the world is tinged purple and blue, as seen through ski goggles or darkened sunglasses. It is the purple of an old film that was made with insufficient lighting. It softens the sharp corners and smoothes out the rough edges, and it causes the woman jogging up the path towards them to look as though she is moving through water, half in shadow.

She looks at her brother out of the corner of her eye. He, too, has noticed the woman. Except, where she is sitting stiffly, straight-backed, with her feet pressed together, her hands in her lap, he is relaxed, one arm thrown over the back of the bench, his body tilted towards her. It is obvious that he is familiar with her, and if she were an outsider, coming upon this situation for the first time, it would be difficult to ascertain exactly how familiar the two of them are. She wishes, not for the first time, that she was alone.

Being alone is her normal state of being, and where once she was not satisfied without human contact, now she is unsure how to react to its ever looming presence. She feels stifled by her brother's physical proximity, as though he is breathing in double his share of oxygen and leaving her to choke on his excess carbon dioxide. She wants to pull away, to make it obvious to the woman drawing closer every second that she is alone, that is he is not her companion, he is not with her. But it is too late, and she is upon them.

Running a curious eye over the striking and comfortable figure her brother has adopted, one eyebrow quirks in what might be amusement. Helena finds that she has stopped breathing, as though waiting in nervous anticipation for something unnamed. The brunette returns Charles' smirk with a level gaze, and then her green eyes turn to Helena. If the seated woman were completely in control of her faculties, she might ascertain the care with which the runner studies her, even as she moves so quickly past, the worry that flits across a serious brow. Instead, all she recognizes is the tiniest of nods, no smile, no 'hi,' no 'hey,' no acknowledgement of more than two week's worth of greetings.

And so she does not translate the question sent her way. The, "_Alright?" _that is asking if it is time for them to officially meet, if today should be the day the runner halts her headlong rush into the future, taking instead a step off the path to stand beside Helena, joining her in this trapped half-world she inhabits. With the, "_Alright?" _that slips by Helena's carefully erected defenses effortlessly but unnoticed, the woman is offering to join her in the rushing, freezing water of a stream that defies gravity. She is offering herself, but Helena misses it.

Instead, she feels her ribs contract around her lungs on impact, like a sonic boom from a passing plane that shatters the windows inward, forcing out the trapped air in a whoosh. If it weren't for her skeleton, she is certain that her body would collapse in on itself in despair. And the crushing wave that threatens to devour her causes the tint of the world to deepen to the indigo found in the half second between dusk and darkness. Between asleep and awake. Between living and dying.

And it's tilted more towards the dying side of things, until Charles exhales in a much more lively manner. "Hot," he proclaims to the world at large. And this simple, rude, chauvinistic comment causes her to swing back on her fulcrum, as the world evens itself out around her, level once more.

In the time before...before, she might have agreed, but now all she can think is, _"Please." _ Sent after a retreating back. _"Please," _because they have missed one another once more. Twin cars on opposite sides of the highway at night who have overshot their exits and are spinning out of control in uncharted territory, maps lost in the jumble of things beneath the seat, coffees cold and stale in styrofoam cups, and eyes that have long since ceased to register the yellow lines blinking past on black pavement. _"Please."_

* * *

They are walking back to the house before dinner, Charles having proclaimed himself starving, when her brother finally gets to the heart of the matter.

"Have you been writing at all?" He asks nonchalantly, one arm looped through hers, as they stroll along. It all feels so very normal. She is quite confused.

"I-"

"Because I saw your notebook on your desk. It looked a bit dusty," he isn't looking at her.

She realizes that this is because he expects her to be upset with him. He has been snooping, looking at her personal things. She has not set foot in the library in weeks. She forgot that she owns a desk with a notebook and a pen with black ink that comes out looking like the silk of a spider's web on a white page. She forgot that once upon a time she was writer of words, that she could fashion the most beautiful webs, delicate and fine, but stronger than steel. She forgot, but with his question, she remembers, and she knows that she should feel upset with him, but instead she simply feels thankful to finally know, to understand, the true reason behind his visit.

Her brother does not simply cross the Atlantic Ocean on a whim. He does not travel thousands of miles to search her behavior for the hints of madness evident in her voice when he manages to get her on the telephone. He is not here for her. He is here for her words. And it is with a sense of relief that she answers, "So that's why you've come."

For some, the truth is a difficult pill to swallow so he splutters and coughs in consternation. "Of course not. Absolutely not. I missed you and wanted to visit! To-t-to check up on you. But, when the bosses heard that I was coming, they may have...asked...me to check in. To see if there might be another manuscript in the works," he appears both hopeful and ashamed.

"It's alright," she reassures him wryly, soothing him as one might a puppy who thinks they are in trouble. "But no."

"No?"

"No stories," she elaborates, exhausted. They are almost back on the familiar street that signifies the end of their journey.

"Helena," he unloops their arms and she heaves a sigh of relief at the sudden loss of contact. "You know that I think you're brilliant. A genius. But, it's been ages since you've written anything. Perhaps...perhaps it might prove therapeutic."

She would laugh out loud at her brother's bumbling stupidity if she didn't think the sound would tear her heart from it's precarious position in her chest.

* * *

_There are tiny hands on her leg, and sleepy brown eyes peering up at her. She sets the pen back in its stand and flexes her fingers. She's never understood the fascination with computers. Hand writing one's work causes the words to flow that much easier, as an extension of one's self. "Come here, darling. Up from your nap already?" She lifts the small figure into her arms, sighing as dark curls burrow into her chest. "Mummy's almost done and then we can cuddle, yes?" A nod. _

_ "Writing?" A young voice asks her._

_ "Mhmm. It's almost ready to be sent to Uncle Charles over in London." _

_ "Wha's about, Mumma?" _

_ "Well, this one is about a fantastical land far off in the future. And a man who travels there."_

_ "S'good?"_

_ She lets loose a light laugh, "I hope so, darling. But you'll have to be the judge of that someday. Someday when you're all grown up." She holds the girl tighter. Hopefully that day does not come too soon. If she could slow the ticking of the clock, command time as her protagonist does, she would do so without a second thought. Because although she cannot wait for her daughter to be grown, she revels in these moments, when Christina is small enough to fit perfectly in her lap, and young enough to look for mummy before all else upon waking. _

_ "It's for you, my darling," she whispers, as she picks up her pen once more, the child already growing heavier against her. "My wonderful, darling girl."_

* * *

"We'll see, brother," she offers him. But the book will stay closed and untouched on it's wooden casket. And the ink will dry up in its sheath, evaporating into the air, invisible and unread. The stories it was once capable of creating having been sucked clean away and buried six feet beneath the ground in an empty box four feet long. She turns away from such an image, from the pressure of six feet of cold, dark soil. She does not think of black holes or the stones that sit at their heads engraved with meaningless lines and symbols. She does not picture tiny coffins or flowers that mark the resting place of someone's baby, of her baby. She does not.

"Well, I'll let them know you're in the process of-"

"No." She cuts him off. "No, you will tell them no such thing."

He looks a bit taken aback at her fierce tone.

"Do you understand me, Charles?" She looks at him, really looks at him, for the first time since he's arrived. His dark eyes, so much like her own look back. She stares fiercely at him and her chest is heaving and her hands are clenched into tight fists and she is not certain where this rage has come from. She thought she'd spent it all months ago. But it is here, filling her up, causing her vision to blur and her brother's face to swim in and out of focus. The anger comes upon on her as a sudden wave, one she is incapable of stopping. "You will not tell them anything about me or what I may or may not be writing. And we will not speak of this again. Do I make myself clear?"

They are standing on the front stoop and when he nods mutely, she turns smartly on her heel to let them into the house. "Excellent. Now. What would you like for dinner?"

* * *

She regrets her outburst that night, after Charles has retired and she is alone in her bedroom. She does not often blow up at him in such a manner. He has been so extremely patient with this entire...ordeal. But she finds that she cannot stomach the thought of putting words to paper when she can hardly form coherent sentences most of the time. And there are no stories left in her, at least not that she can sense. They used to come to her at all times throughout the day: while making breakfast, getting the mail, driving to work. But now, she finds that the only novels she has left within her are those of the past, and these are too dangerous for her to even contemplate letting loose into the world. The only stories she retains are ones too precious for her to share.

The curtains are open and the moon is streaming through the transparent panes. She stands, looking out upon the world, silver where the moon hits, purple in the shadows. The stars are a million flecks of light, all pointing their beams toward earth. Some of those stars are already dead, she knows. They have winked out millions of years ago and the only clue one will have to their explosive death will be a last flicker before their patch of sky goes suddenly dark. All those stars in all those infinite miles of space, all with their own planets and solar systems and stories. Who will notice as they disappear? Who is tracking their brilliance?

* * *

_"What's that one, Mummy? The 'w?'" A finger points up towards the heavens. _

_ "Cassiopeia. A queen."_

_ "And that one?" _

_ "That's the dragon, Draco. See his head and there's his body."_

_ "I see! I see it!" The little girl's body practically vibrates in excitement and Helena reaches over to take a tiny hand in her own, tracing the pattern the stars make with their conjoined fingers. _

_ "And that one there, that looks like a cup of sorts, that's the Big Dipper. But it also makes up part of Ursa Major."_

_ "Ursa Major?"_

_ "The big bear."_

_ "Is there a baby bear?"_

_ "Little bear, yes," she smiles. "Right there. Ursa Minor."_

_ "Are they a momma and a baby?"_

_ This is one plausible version of the myth, so, "Yes."_

_ "Like I'm _your _baby?" _

_ "Exactly. My baby bear." The child giggles and snuggles closer to her mother beneath the blanket. "And you see that star, right there, in the little bear, the bright one?"_

_ "Mhmm."_

_ "That star is called Polaris. The North Star. And it's what helps the momma bear find her baby bear. It shines so bright all the time and it never moves."_

_ "So if the momma bear gets lost, she can just look for Po-lair-is?" She sounds out the unfamiliar word._

_ "Exactly, my love. If the mummy and her baby get separated, they just look for Polaris and follow it home again." _

_ Her daughter hums deep in her throat. "What if I ever get lost, mumma?"_

_ "I'll just follow the North Star back to you, my darling. I could never lose you for long."_

_ "Promise?"_

_ "I promise."_


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: I'm a bit overwhelmed by the response this story has received. Thank you. Thank you all so much. Love.**

* * *

It is the fifth official day of Charles' visit and the fourth day she has not been to visit the park. It is the fourth day in a row that she has not met the bright smile of a woman who runs with a purpose with a tentative uplifting of her own lips. It is the fourth day in a row that she has not whispered her hello, her '_please. tell me your story as i long to tell you mine. because you entrance me. even from a distance.' _in the form of a shy, "Hi." It is the fourth day, and it is cloudy and overcast. It is the type of day where you can smell the rain in the air, just out of sight. The type of day where you debate wearing a rain coat on your way out the door and then regret not doing so later in the afternoon. It is the fourth day in a row that Helena has felt herself to be slowly suffocating in the presence of a man who has known her since she was still in diapers.

They are on their way to the Mall. Charles has insisted that she take him to see the Capitol building, the Washington monument, everything. Even though he has already seen it multiple times. He insists that because they are being tourists for the day, they must act the part, and therefore they are riding the subway into the city. It is crowded and loud and everyone smells of wet wool and old shoes although the heavens have yet to open the flood gates.

She flip flops between reciting the periodic table and the Lord's Prayer. She is not religious. Once upon a time, she might have considered the periodic table to be _one _her daily prayers. That and proper sentence structure. And calculus. But, now, she says it not as a prayer, but simply as a way to keep her mind off the bodies that are too close to her own, their elbows poking her in the back, their conversations floating in one ear and out the other, louder and louder because none of them are actually _listening _to one another. She tries not to think of all the lives surrounding her, all the different stories that are overturning her senses and trying to outshout her own history. All of these people with petty problems and ridiculous concerns and mothers and fathers, sisters, husbands, aunts, uncles, mistresses, and children. So many stories in too tight a space. Their words are overflowing the available space. She wants to scream, to throw her hands over her ears, to escape, to give in to the overpowering urge she feels to just run. To hop off at the next stop, leaving her brother behind her, to take off, back towards the sheltered safety of a house with all its specters and poltergeists, back to an old bench and the piercing cries of happy children and a woman with brown curls and knowing eyes.

Helena is not a runner. She never has been. In the battle between fight or flight, it was her fight instinct that almost always kicked in, usually landing her in some type of trouble. Now, however, she would delight in nothing more than gaining the ability to sprout wings and fly away, no matter how improbable it might be. She would fly forever, free and unhindered, following some invisible compass. And perhaps, like Icarus she would be drawn towards the sun, closer and closer to its warmth, until her wings caught fire and she tumbled head over heels back to the earth. For even birds must make their nests on land. Even they must leave the freedom of the skies to return, shackled forever, to the earth.

And so she recites the periodic table to keep her feet firmly planted on solid ground. When she has finished, she runs through the Lord's Prayer: "_Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven -_" And then it's back to the periodic table because science is safer in this regard. Words are a two-edged blade which come without a warning label or a handle, so no matter how you try to handle them, you always come away with bloody palms. _"Hydrogen. Helium. Lithium. Beryllium. Boron. Carbon. Carbon. Carbon." _She cannot focus. The titles escape her, slipping out of her grasp as gas is wont to do.

Charles is shaking her shoulder, bringing her out of her half daze. "This is us!" he crows. He is excited. She doesn't understand. "C'mon, H," he encourages her, grabbing her hand to lead her through the mass of bodies and towards the doors that are sliding open.

They are pushing their way out onto the platform when it happens. She catches sight of her disappearing into the doors one car down. She is wearing a white dress with tights, and her inky curls are pulled into a pony tail off her neck. She is holding onto a woman's hand, and in the other tiny fist is clutched a raggedy old doll. Helena wrenches herself out of Charles' grasp and turns towards the disappearing child, but the doors are already closing with a horrible whooshing sound, even as her mouth closes over the name,

* * *

_"Christina. Christina! Christina," she is spinning in circles, looking frantically for any sign of her daughter. She's wearing a red coat. It should be easy to spot, but amongst all these people, all these laughing families and fast moving feet, she cannot see her. "Christina?!" _

_ Charles has moved away from her, his own face scrunched in concern and worry. She was just here. Helena turned away for only a moment, to tell Charles something, and when she looked back, her daughter was gone. _

_ "Christina!" She is running, frantic and harried. She can hear the blood rushing in her ears as she looks everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. There! She spins the child, but it isn't her. It's not her daughter, and she doesn't even apologize to the little girl who is looking at her curiously, this half crazed mother who has been so suddenly separated from all that she is. _

_ "Christina! Chris!" That's her brother's voice, deep and commanding and spreading towards her from the opposite direction._

_ There are scenarios running through her mind faster than the speed of light. Images and nightmares that flash before her too quickly to put names to. They are at the zoo. It's broad daylight, but they are surrounded by strangers. Any of them, any of these faceless, nameless people could have taken her. She could have wandered off, all naive innocence and trusting brown eyes. She could have been drawn in by her curiosity, her desire for wonder and knowledge. She could be anywhere._

_ "Christina!" Her voice sounds foreign to her own ears, harsh and strangled and nothing like herself. It has only been two minutes and already she has become unrecognizable. She is pivoting in place because there is no left or right or forward or backward. She is stuck, unable to move, to act. She has never felt so disjointed. So completely helpless as she does in this moment. She moves outward, stretching herself as thin as she can manage, covering as much distance, time, and space, searching, ever searching. _

_ Until, "Mummy!" The voice is joyful, not scared or broken in any way, and she feels her heart leap into her throat. "Mummy, over here!" There she is, waving from a seated position atop the balloon sellers cart. She has a blue balloon tied to her wrist, holding it in place, keeping it from simply drifting up, up, and away to pop somewhere far above them in the atmosphere. She looks delighted. _

_ Helena is torn between conflicting desires. She wants, for the first time to strike this child in front of her, this child who is looking at her happily. This seven year old who has no idea the panic her actions have caused. Helena's arm shakes at her side. She has never been so furious. But, instead, she pulls the tiny form in close to her own. They are nearly eye level because Christina is still sitting atop the cart. And so Helena buries her face in sun-drenched curls and holds back a sob. "Where have you been? Oh, my darling. My sweet, sweet girl."_

_ When she finally pulls away to hold her daughter's face between her hands and count the freckles there, ensuring that each one is intact, Christina is looking a bit abashed. "I'm sorry, Mummy," she apologizes, looking down. "Didn't mean to scare you."_

_ "Christina!" Charles' voice still sounds frightened._

_ "Charles!" Helena calls, sending the address over her shoulder without looking away from the perfect face in front of her. "Charles, she's here! I've got her."_

_ "Oh, thank God," her brother pants as he skids to a halt beside them. _

_ "You do not ever, _ever _do such a thing again, do you hear me?" She is both ferocious and protective. Her daughter nods silently. "I thought you were lost. I thought I'd lost you," and she pulls the tiny body, still so small, so helpless into her arms once more, placing kisses on whatever she can reach. "Never again, my darling. Please. I beg of you."_

* * *

"Helena? Hey, are you alright?" her brother sounds frightened. He turned around at the sudden loss of contact, and finds her staring brokenly after a retreating train.

"Take me home," she orders, voice wooden. This was a bad idea. She is not ready. She doesn't want to be near all of these people.

"H, I-"

"Take me home, Charles." Tired. Worn. She does not say please.

But her face is pale, and she looks suddenly much smaller and more transparent than she did a moment ago, because he nods. He reaches out for her elbow, as though to lead her over to the opposite platform, back the way they'd come, but she flinches when he touches her and so he draws away.

Instead, he turns and she follows and they walk back to the other platform, weaving their way in and out of all of the other people trailing their stories behind them like capes in the breeze. And she does not look around for fear of spotting another little girl with brown hair and eyes the color of chocolate and curiosity and challenge all rolled into one.

* * *

It is even darker when they step out from the underground. It is only early afternoon, but already the world is grey. Taking on the colors found between black and white. Between present and invisible. The wind has begun to pick up, sweeping the orange and red leaves up from the street gutters until they are whipping around Helena's legs. She can feel the bite of the breeze through her sweater. It is almost cold enough to snow.

They stroll up the street. Well, Charles strolls, while she stumbles along behind, the half remembered image of a girl in a red coat, cheeks pink and shining in delight at giraffes who stretch above her short stature, tormenting her. She feels the first drops of rain as if from far away, splashing her in the face, thumping against her chest. Warning her of an impending deluge the way climate scientists attempt to warn the public about the next impending ice age. Charles lets out a murmur of distaste. They are still several blocks from the house.

She lifts her chin, closing her eyes for ten steps. One. Two. Seven. Twenty-four rain drops find her skin in that distance. When she opens her eyes once more, it takes a moment for them to adjust to the grayness that is her neighbor's mailbox and the paper sitting forgotten on the lawn, ink already beginning to run. She is ten steps closer to her house.

* * *

_"Christina Wells, you get your tiny butt back in this house now, young lady!" _

_ The only answer is twinkling laughter. _

_ She sighs, wrapping her arms around her waist from the safety of the roofed porch. "Don't make me come out there!" _

_ "Mummy! Look!" And the child throws her arms out, away from her body, spinning like a whirling dervish, faster and faster until it looks like she might spin out of control. But she comes to a half suddenly, and then wobbles on her short legs before toppling down into the mud with a joyous shout. Her hair is slicked back to her head and her clothes are soaked through._

_ "You'll catch cold," her mother warns._

_ "Mummy," and it is a reprimand as only youth can deliver. _

_ "Christina," half plea, half fed up amusement._

_ She is unprepared for the little girl hurling herself towards her until it is too late and she opens her arms on reflex, accepting the impact and the wet hug that comes with it. Her daughter's hand is in her own and shining eyes are glowing up at her, tugging her out, away from the protective enclave that is her home. _

_ "Come on," Christina urges her, until finally, she gives in, joining her daughter in the rain. _

_ They hold hands and spin until they both flop down in the mud, and then Christina lobs a clod of wet dirt at her mother and Helena is forced to retaliate. They chase one another across the lawn, slipping and sliding on the grass, sopping and chilled, their clothes stained green and brown. And they are laughing. Helena is laughing. Laughing until she does not feel the rain or the cold, laughing until all she can remember is Christina's devilish smirk and well aimed mud ball._

* * *

Charles has the key and he lets them inside, shaking his hair as he does so, splattering the water around, bringing the rain in with him. She slips out of her shoes, but does not try to shake away the water running down the back of her neck. The cold chill is a welcome relief.

* * *

He waits to bring it up until they are sitting around the fake fireplace in the library, their feet pointed towards its cartoonish flames. He has a beer in one hand, lazing in the chair as if this has been his resting place for ages. She is sipping on a glass of wine that he put into her hand.

"What happened?" his voice is soft, testing. He is out on thin ice immediately, and he knows it.

She runs her finger along the rim of the glass, waiting as its low pitched tone fades from the room. She could just not answer, pretend she hasn't heard, although they are only separated by a meter of space. That air is full of unanswered questions and hanging sentence fragments no one was brave enough to finish. This could simply be another one lost in the abyss. She sighs. He deserves a response. For coming all the way here, putting up with her nonsense. He is her big brother after all. He's simply doing his best, and she cannot fault him for that, as much as she would like to.

"I-" she takes a sip of the wine, sharp and biting on her tongue, "I saw...a girl. And for a moment, I thought. Well, I thought it was her."

This is the first time she has made reference to her daughter out loud in months. Even the pronoun feels wrong crossing her lips. _"Hydrogen. Helium. Lithium. Bery-"_

"I see." Is that pity?

She hates pity. It's a horrible emotion. Wrong and off-putting.

"But, I'm fine," she snaps.

He stares at her, searching. He sees right through her. "You said you've been seeing someone...?"

No. She said she'd been talking to someone. A certain someone whose name she does not know, and she thinks that this probably won't cut it with her brother. She shrugs.

"Hel," his tone is guarded. "It might really help, you know. The-they have support groups and stuff. For people who have...lost a-"

"Lost?" It comes out strangled. "Like losing your keys. Or your favorite shirt. Lost. Like lost and found." She snorts. "It was not a loss, dear brother."

"Then what was _it," _and he says this last word delicately, unsure if it is appropriate.

She flounders, struggling for words. "Theft," she manages.

He levels a stare at her. "Theft," he repeats.

She glares at the carpeting. Yes. This is the proper term. But he is not satisfied, and she does not want to get into this with him, not while the barometric pressure is dropping and a storm is forming outdoors and her chest feels all mangled and full of shrapnel from some non-existent war. "Why don't you explain to me then," she bites out.

He opens and closes his mouth several times. "I- Well, they say -"

"They? Who is '_they?'_" She's being intentionally nasty. She doesn't even care.

"They. Them. People who have experienced what you're going through. Experts."

"No one has experience what I'm going through," she hisses. "What I've gone through."

"Helena," this is a rebuttal, a rebuke. "That's not true."

"It is! It _is _true, Charles! You don't understand. You can't see." She is up and out of her chair, the emotion in her chest causing her legs to feel antsy. To need to move.

"You have to let it go, Helena. You cannot let this consume you."

"Consume me? She i-" She takes a deep, shuddering breath. Past tense. "She was my child. My _child. _And you expect me to simply move on?"

"Well, no, but-"

"No! My child, Charles. Born of my body. She was my soul. She was the best parts of me. The brightest parts. And now. Now I have nothing."

"That's not tru-" he tries again, but she cuts him off with a swipe of her arm.

"You don't know what it's like to have something that precious, that completely innocent just snatched away from you. Torn from you," and it is agony to say these words aloud.

"Help me understand," he pleads, staring up at her.

She strides over to him and pushes her hand against his chest, directly where his heart is. He does not have time to lean away. "Do you feel that?" her voice is softer now, dangerous. He nods. "Your heart is beating. Isn't it a wondrous thing?" Gently, she takes his hand in her own and lifts it to her own chest. "You feel that?" But he doesn't nod this time. "Empty," she whispers, turning away before he can disagree.

"Hel."

"She was my life. And I cannot simply walk away from that. I cannot simply put her on the shelf with all the other stories and be done with it, Charles. It doesn't work that way."

"No one is expecting you to forget about her," he argues. "That would be impossible. It's just that it's been months and all you do is mope around this house," he gestures to the walls, dark now, as the clouds have gathered with the coming storm. The pitter patter of rain drops fills the room, riding the silences between the flickering of fake flames. Their shadows are long, and black. "You quit your job, took a leave, whatever. You aren't _doing _anything."

"Mourning," she snaps. "I am mourning," she curls her hands into a tight ball.

"Yes, well, perhaps it's time to hang up the black."

She whirls to face him. And he cringes. This was a misstep. He backtracks. "What I meant was, that perhaps it's time to think about getting back out into the world again. Writing. Or teaching a lecture. Just go into the office now and then. Play chess with Caturanga or _something_."

She stares, almost dumbstruck. Her brother has never had the gall to speak to her this way before. She has always been the more commanding one. And here he is, reaming her out for mourning her child for God's sakes. She'd break out into laughter if it wasn't all so depressingly ridiculous.

"Is this really what _she _would want you to be doing?" A pause. "Helena? Is this how Christi-"

"Don't," her hand shakes. "Don't you dare say her name."

He sighs. "Helena. Is this what she would want?"

* * *

_"Don't cry, mumma." A little hand wipes away the tears on her mother's cheek._

_ "I know, sweetness. I'm sorry." She closes the book that has caused these tears to fall. It is late. Christina should be asleep. But she has snuck into her mother's bedroom unnoticed. "I'm not sad, darling. Don't worry." She pulls the warm body up beside her own and places a kiss to each cheek._

_ "Love you," her daughter says sweetly. _

_ "I love you, too, beautiful girl."_

* * *

She shakes her head no and wraps her arms about herself because he is right. Of course he is. Her daughter would not wish her mother to be sad, so terribly terribly sad and heavy. She lived for the light in all things. The candle in the darkness. The star in the night. She would not approve. But Helena is too far gone to completely admit this. She has dug the hole of her grief so deep that it is impossible for her to see the light of day, let alone reach the rope her brother is helplessly attempting to toss down to her. She has buried her hopes, any possibility for future happiness long ago, and the thought of digging it back up is terrifying. She is not sure what she might find if she were to pry the lid off that particular box.

"I can't."

"You can," he encourages her, standing to approach her hunched form. "You just have to take that first step. Just start talking about her. About what you're feeling. Don't keep it all bottled up inside. You're going to explode, Helena, and what then?"

"I _can't_!" She jerks away when he attempts to lay a hand on her arm. "Don't you see? She haunts me. And I don't want to let go. I don't want to lose her. To forget her."

"You won't. Helena, you won't. Of course not," his voice is soothing. It would be so easy to let him lull her into a state of calm, of acceptance. But that would be giving in, wouldn't it? Accepting her grief meant letting go and letting go meant forgetting, and she would not allow her daughter to be forgotten.

"No," she steps away from him, towards the door of the library. "I won't. I will not leave her."

"Helena."

She faces him squarely. There are no tears in her eyes, but her stomach hurts from all the salt water. "She was my daughter. And she was taken from me. I a-was her mother. Her mother, dammit! You cannot possibly understand."

"You have to heal, Helena. Your body needs to heal."

Her eyes are the black of hidden ice shining on the pavement at night. Dangerous. Wild. Her chest is heaving. But he approaches nonetheless, one arm outstretched to calm her. "You cannot possibly understand," she repeats.

"Helena," his voice is louder now, trying to subdue her.

"No!" And she spins away, out the door and into the hall, his voice ringing in her ears, taunting her. She has wrenched open the front door and bounded down the steps without thinking. Her body is on autopilot. It is truly raining now, and she is wearing nothing but a light sweater. She is soaked almost immediately. But she runs anyway, ignoring her brother's desperate cries from the porch. He had no right. No right at all. Her feet are taking her away, far away from him, and his pitying looks. He didn't understand. Couldn't understand. It was her daughter. Her baby. Her precious, darling girl. She strode off into the rain, eyes focused inward, teeth already chattering. He couldn't understand.


	7. Chapter 7

_ "Please. Please let me come! I'll be good. I promise."_

_ "It's not that I think you won't be good, darling," she stopped her packing and peered over her suitcase. "But, you've got a fever. And sick little girls stay home in bed."_

_ The child, the rosy pinkness of her cheeks bright against the white of the bedsheets, pouted and crossed her arms across her thin chest. "I'm eight years and two months old. That's not little."_

_ Her mother smiled. "True. You're very nearly grown. A bonafide adult."_

_ She may not have known the definition of the adjective, but, "Don't tease, mummy. It's not nice."_

_ "You're right." Helena nodded apologetically. Because it was true that growing older was both a blessing and a curse. And it was true that this growing up always seemed to happen in the deepest hours of sleep, while dreams were given free reign to play the part of reality. Therefore, she desired nothing more than to take her daughter with her, and try, however impossibly, to capture the moment in her memory when the child took a step closer to nine and a leap away from _merely_ eight. Those moments, those growing up moments were among her favorites. Late at night, her child firmly settled in the REM cycle, little face relaxed upon her pillow. When it's almost possible to pretend that the world has stopped spinning, when the silence is anything but oppressive, and the weight of the sheets against her skin is warm and cool all at once. When her daughter is still young enough to seek her mummy's arms after a nightmare, but almost too old for mother's bed. The moments that are past, present and future all at once. Those are her favorites. And she was loathe to miss even one._

_ She came around the end of the bed and sat down on the mattress, sighing happily when her daughter automatically scooted over to settle in her arms. This was home. She pressed a kiss to a warm forehead. "Sophie will be here soon and you two will have plenty of fun. I'll be back tomorrow evening."_

_ "Will you bring me something from your trip."_

_ Helena laughed brightly, cocking an eyebrow. "What would you like?"_

_ Christina pondered for a moment, sucking on her bottom lip. "Mm...a puppy?" she tried, looking altogether too adorable. _

_ Helena pretended to ponder the request for all of three seconds before attacking the child with tickles. The delighted squeals quickly drowned out any thoughts of cute, fuzzy creatures that pooped and peed all over everything. After several moments, the mother broke up the fun, leaving behind a panting and exuberant child. "Now, come on," she gave the girl an arm up. "I've got to finish getting ready, and you, little miss need to go and draw yourself a bath."_

_ "But I'm sick," the child tried._

_ "Exactly. Now off with you," and she watched with a satisfied smile as her daughter headed for the bathroom, before turning back to do battle with the suitcase, hands on her hips._

* * *

She is quite certain that this is what freezing feels like. When your blood draws back into your extremities and your fingers and toes turn purple so you can't feel them and on a thermal screen you are only a single pulsing point of brilliant red light in a halo of blue. And for a moment, she almost wishes for some fantastical climatic event to occur, turning the earth cold and hurtling the planet into another ice age. She wishes that the ground beneath her feet matched the color of her hands and that the only sign of life was the heat of the core thousands of miles beneath her feet. She almost wishes, but she cannot complete the thought before the pain induced by rain hovering on the edge of sleet is wiped away once more.

* * *

_"Mummy!" _

_ "I heard it!" she calls back. "I heard it." She's rushing down the hallway, trying to tuck a few loose strands of hair back into the bun at the nape of her neck and smoothing down her blouse. "Sophie! Hello," she says upon opening the door._

_ The young, twenty-something Georgetown student smiles at her from the stoop._

_ "Do come in," she encourages. "I'm so terribly sorry to have called you just last minute, but Christina - Christina! Sophie's here." she shouts into the house, "Sorry," she apologizes. "Like I was saying. She came down with this fever, and I couldn't cancel the meeting so last minute, so-"_

_ "Don't worry, Ms. Wells. Honestly. It's cool."_

_ "Helena, please," she insists, not for the first time._

_ "Hey, Christina," the sitter waves to the child who has wandered out of her room, brown curls still wet and dripping from her bath. _

_ "Hi, Soph," she murmurs, clutching a ratty old stuffed giraffe to her chest. _

_ She is always shy when she's not feeling well, and once again, Helena feels the tug on her heartstrings, urging her to stay home. But, she can't. "Well!" she claps her hands together before checking the pocket watch hanging from its delicate, silver chain. "I _really _must be off. I don't want to miss my flight. There's chicken noodle soup warming on the stove, and you know where everything else is." Sophie nods. "Early bedtime tonight," she directs this towards the child more so than the adult. "Christina, one last hug?" she asks, opening her arms. She breathes in the fresh soap smell that clings to her daughter's silky skin. "Be good," she murmurs. _

_ "Mhmm. Will you call when you land?"_

_ "You'll be in bed, silly goose. But, I'll call bright and early tomorrow morning to check in, alright?" She feels the nod against her neck. "I love you, baby bear."_

_ "Love you, too."_

_ And she's pulling away and grabbing her bag, opening the door, nodding and waving and thanking Sophie all at once. Out of the house before she has time to regret missing a night of the leap towards adulthood. A single night. But if she moves quickly enough, she might be able to pretend it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things._

* * *

She is soaked through. To the skin. Except it's hard to tell where the rain stops and all of those tears that she's been trapping inside begin. Because even the rain tastes like the ocean when it's all around you and you've forgotten the way to the surface. She thinks that once upon a time there might have been a bench beneath her, and that this place might have been called a park, but now everything is the deep, dark pressurized sea floor where even the fish can't survive. And this thing that she is sitting on isn't large enough to be called a piece of drift wood; certainly not enough for an entire life boat. Perhaps once upon a time she knew how to swim, but apparently it isn't like riding a bike, and, just like the tracks left behind in the mud by the deer at the river's edge, the rain has washed it all away. Everything. Except.

* * *

_"Hullo?" The clock reads 3:15 and from some hazy distant place, she knows she's missed Christina's next step towards nine. _

_ "Yes, is this Mrs. Wells?"_

_ "Ms. Wells. Yes." She sits up, because if there is a strange man on her phone line at a quarter past three in the morning, it is the only proper thing to do. "Who's calling, please?"_

_ "Ms. Wells. I'm afraid I'm calling with bad news." _

_ There is a moment in every parent's nightmare that appears as if from a half-remembered dream as soon as the child you adore is present in his or her bed, safely asleep before you for the first time. This is that moment. And all she can see is her daughter's face turning from 8 years old and 59 days to 8 and 60. _

_ Her voice does not shake, "Yes?"_

* * *

There is no one else in the park on this dreary fall day. No one willing to brave the elements. She is not brave. She does not know what the word even means. Except that she does not satisfy its requirements. Perhaps if she were courageous, she would not have run out into the storm when her brother spoke the truth. Perhaps if she were strong, she would not be shivering in the cold, goosebumps creeping along her arms, echoes of invisible children roaring in her ears, sounding suspiciously like rain swallowed by the waves. Perhaps if she were more alive than drowned, she would register the way her fingernails are turning blue, and she would choke on the water filling her lungs, and hear the cries of her body, abandoned by her mind. Maybe. But the line between alive and dead is a fine one, the line between sinking and floating is blurred, just as the lines between asleep and awake, child and adult are frequently overstepped, smudged out of sight by an unwary foot.

* * *

_She picks out a t-shirt from the hotel gift shop on her way out. It is 4:22 now, and she has stuffed clothes into a bag, and paid a sleepy looking attendant at the front desk. And for some reason this gift shop is open twenty four hours, and so she remembers at the last moment to go back and pick up a souvenir. 'I 3 NY' it proclaims. It's orange. Like Christina's giraffe used to be. Size small. _

_ She takes a cab to the airport, and finds herself bobbing to the sitar music blaring from the cabbie's radio. When she hands him the fare, he turns out to be a little old man from the South Bronx, wizened and missing several teeth. And he looks at the money in her outstretched hand. The money that is held in a hand that does not shake. And he looks up to meet her dark eyed gaze, and he frowns._

_ "Keep it," he tells her, handing her the suitcase from the trunk. She doesn't understand, but she pockets the cash anyway and then hurries through the sliding glass doors, into the halogen lighted hallways of La Guardia._

_ An hour and twelve minutes. That is how long the flight is meant to last, but it takes them an hour and fourteen. Those around her look tired, only half awake, but she sits rigid in her seat, hands folded in her lap, and she turns away from the man sitting beside her because he is wearing a red shirt. Looking instead at the seat back in front of her, the tray table: gray, the seat: blue. Blue like the color of the sky reflected in the lake she and her brother used to vacation on with their parents when they were younger. Still children. Still stepping between imagination and reality on a nightly basis. _

_ And when the flight lands, the morning sky in DC is both blue like that lake, and red. Red, like- But she ignores the red, and focuses on the blue instead. Blue like peace and calm and floating._

* * *

She remembers that there is a thing called fire. That in some far distant past, it was the invention of the century. Her skin tries to tell her that fire is warm. That it is good. But all she can remember is that it is orange and yellow with a heart of blue, blue like ice. And a shell of red. Red. Red, like- No.

* * *

_Her hands on the steering wheel do not shake. She has tossed her suitcase in the back seat, but she has yet to let go of the t-shirt. It sits beside her in the passenger seat. She drives the thirty minutes from the airport calmly, obeying all street signs, sitting patiently through every single red light. _

_ It is still early. There are few cars on the road. Dedicated employees heading in to the office. A school bus passes her, full of children with their heads resting against smudged windows. Still half-asleep, not yet accustomed to the way their older bodies react to this new dawning. They don't realize yet that they have stepped closer to graduation day. The changes are so small. But their parents know. Even as they woke their children up after alarms had been ignored, placed cereal in front of them, handed them backpacks hand in hand with opportunity, or even just looked in on them before writing a quick note and slipping out the door. Their parents have noticed._

_ She parks three houses down. This is Mrs. O'Leary's house. She's nice. She's watched Christina from time to time. She makes cupcakes. Christina loves Mrs. O'Leary's cupcakes. _

_ And as she approaches her home, her house, because it is already a house and not a home, t-shirt in hand, she is brought up short by yellow caution tape and flashing lights. Blue. Red. Blue again. And a man, a man who holds up his hand. _

_ "I'm sorry, Ma'am. I can't let you come any closer." _

_ She peers calmly around him; there are many other such people milling around. Dressed in uniforms. Dark blue. Navy. She likes that word. Navy. It feels soft on her tongue. Safe. She supposes that's why it's the color that policemen wear. _

_ She opens her mouth to say her name, but at the last moment, she can't remember what it is. Hello, my name is. Blank. She swallows the air she'd retrieved for the purpose, staring at the man in front of her silently instead. _

_ "Ma'am, please," he begins, but, like the cabbie from earlier and the stewardess on the plane who hadn't finished asking her if she'd like a beverage, the officer stops mid-sentence. He ducks his head and she lifts her chin. "Uh, Mrs. Wells?" He asks, sounding both apologetic and frightened. _

_ "Ms. Wells," she says. _

_ "Right," and now he looks afraid, glancing left and right until he catches sight of someone and waves. "Sergeant," he calls, and the other man nods and heads over in their direction. She looks at the man expectantly. But he doesn't say anything until the older figure has reached them, looking both exhausted and in charge all at once. "Sarg," the officer says. "Thi-this is Ms. Wells."_

_ The man sighs and runs a scarred hand through his close cropped gray hair. "Ms. Wells," his voice is gruff. But there is understanding hidden beneath the rough exterior. Sorrow. She trusts him immediately. His eyes are piercing and strong, and the blue of icy fjords in Norway that she had showed Christina in last month's National Geographic magazine. The child had been enthralled. _

_ "Ms. Wells," he repeats. "If you'd come this way, we have a car ready to take you to the hospital." _

_ She shakes her head, staring up the front walk towards the porch of her house. The front door is open. Men and women are moving in and out of the building as if they have been visiting for years. "I think I'd rather go inside first."_

_ "Oh, Ms. Wel-" the younger officer starts, but his superior cuts him off with a hand on his arm. _

_ She doesn't look away from the door, but she can feel those eyes studying her. Searching her. She waits._

_ "Alright." He agrees. "This way," and she is more than thankful that he doesn't try to take her elbow as he leads her towards her own house._

* * *

She has moved beyond cold and entered the realm of unfeeling. It is still raining. But that might be the sky simply crying.

* * *

_"Mummy?"_

_ "Darling?"_

_ "Do the clouds get sad?"_

_ "Sad?"_

_ "When it rains? Are the clouds crying?"_

_ "I don't know, sweet girl. What do you think?"_

_ "I think we all need to cry sometimes."_

_ "Oh?"_

_ "Tears are the way the soul meets the air. And even the clouds have got souls. They're too beautiful not to."_

_ Her heart explodes._

* * *

So maybe the clouds are just letting their soul out for a bit. She's not sure if she's got a soul anymore. And if she has, she doesn't let it out. This might be her greatest travesty. That and not being brave. Not being brave and that fact that has fallen in love with the darkness that is found only at the ocean floor.

* * *

_"They're still processing," he tells her. She is wearing funny things on her shoes. But not gloves. Because she'd promised without words not to touch anything. The other people have filed out of the house. She thinks that perhaps he has told them to go, but she can no longer hear beyond the rushing in her ears. And her hands have started to shake. _

_ Through the door. Red. There is something red there. A tiny something. Only a speckle really, but she zeroes in on it. He leads the way down the hall. She does not look into the library as they pass. Then they are standing outside of a white door. Except the door isn't just white. There's red on it too now. Like paint that has splattered down the wooden surface. A poor paint job. But they don't go through that door, instead they go into her bedroom. More red. And then the bathroom, and the pounding in her head is growing and growing and she feels her entire body shaking. She has dropped the shirt. The 'I 3 NY' is soaking up the red. And the nice sergeant, kind and without pity is speaking but she can't understand the words leaving his mouth. Because everything is red. Red. Everywhere. Oh, god. Red like the sun. Like fire. Like blood. Not like. Like is metaphor. This is simile. Red. Blo-_

* * *

It's raining. Pounding down on her head. Dripping down the back of her neck. Coating her in the sky's tears. Until, suddenly. It isn't. She looks up slowly. Her palms are bleeding. She has dug her nails so deeply into her flesh that she has drawn blood. But the redness was being washed away immediately by the freshwater tears shed by the clouds above, until now. Now the red is pooling in her palms. So, she looks up slowly.

And there is a woman standing over her, with a black umbrella held above her, keeping her wiry brown curls only slightly damp as opposed to soaking. It takes her a moment to place this woman, with eyes that are normally the color of moss that only grows on the north side of the trees - wait, is that a myth? - yes. Eyes that are usually the color of moss, but are different today. Darker. More like the shadows under the oak trees, among the roots that rise from the soil. Fresh and clean. And smelling of both decay and growing things.

She raises one hand halfway out of her lap before remembering the blood and putting it down once more. "Hi," she says. But it's disjointed and comes out as three syllables because she can't feel her lips. She wonders if they're gone. If this is simply the next stage in the process of losing her words. Her voice.

The woman merely cocks her head to the side, her mouth drawn into a curious frown. She doesn't respond. And Helena wonders if any of this is real. How could this woman possibly have found her at the bottom of the ocean?

She finds that she is staring once more at her hands, so weak and helpless, clasped in her lap. They are unfamiliar.

There is movement that she sees out of the corner of her eye. The umbrella hasn't shifted, except there is something being placed around her shoulders. Heavy and warm and smelling of evergreen trees. She feels a hand on her shoulder, feather light, and she glances over to see long fingers fixing the item so that it lays evenly. When she looks back up at the woman with the umbrella, it is to see that she has taken off her coat and for half a second Helena wonders where it has gone and why it has been lost, until the sudden weight makes sense. She has been given this woman's jacket. This stranger's coat. Only she isn't a stranger.

And the woman, tall and strong and wearing a grey sweatshirt with a logo that she recognizes as government issue, is still watching her. Helena tries to place the expression. Sadness. Understanding. It reminds her of the blue eyes in an old man's face, worn after many long years of doing the same painful thing over and over again. This woman's face looks the way his did. Younger. Less lined. But the heaviness is there. The knowing. And Helena knows that someday the lines on this woman's face will match the creases in the old man's. And it makes her feel...melancholy. What a beautiful word. Melancholy. She almost says it aloud to taste it on her tongue, but her mouth is full of tears and raindrops so there isn't any room for beauty.

The woman sits beside her suddenly, and as she moves, Helena smells fir trees again. But also the smell of sunshine caught in white cotton sheets that have been hung up to dry on a line in a backyard with freshly mown grass beneath a sky so blue it feels like falling. She closes her eyes to savor the hint of summertime. She keeps them closed until the woman beside her clears her throat. Once. Taps her long fingers on her thigh. Twice. Takes a breath. Three times.

"Hi." Soft. A pause. "It's raining, you know." It isn't a question. "And you look like a popsicle."

Ten words. Ten words more than usual. And with those ten words, Helena wonders if one will ever be enough again. Because that voice is a bit shaky, but it's layered underneath with steel, and it sounds like the wind between the pines. She feels an ache in her stomach, in a space that is deep below her ribcage, to hear that voice again. Proper conversation etiquette says that she is supposed to respond. It's an exchange. And she would like to deliver, but most of all she wants to hear that voice again.

"I was afraid you weren't going to come anymore. You were here that one day with that man-"

"My brother," and her voice sounds hollow and old. A rocking chair that won't hold weight any longer, left forgotten in someone's attic. Gathering dust.

"Your brother. I see." They lapse back into silence, but it's nice. Easy. Like the rain drops pattering on the umbrella above them. She is not quite as numb as she was, and it's painful. Coming back into yourself is always painful. Pins and needles.

"Well, anyway. You weren't here for a few days," it isn't accusatory. "So I thought maybe you'd stopped coming."

She plays back all of the words in her mind. Afraid. The other woman had said afraid before. Helena understands fear. She is not brave. But this person is brave. She can already tell. Brave in the way that police officers are brave. Brave in that she has walked into the park on a rainy afternoon that is almost sleeting and wrapped her coat around a woman she doesn't know. But this woman, who doesn't admit to fear, Helena knows, has said the word afraid. And she hasn't lied.

"Sorry," she whispers. She is not quite sure what she is apologizing for, but perhaps it is for making this woman afraid. Or perhaps it is because they are sitting on a bench in the middle of a rain storm during a month when it should already be snowing.

The woman, she is looking far away, reaches out and wraps her hand in Helena's. She doesn't seem to mind the red. Helena wants to pull away, because she has not held hands with anyone in many months. Because all of a sudden the bench she is sitting on feels a bit more like a life raft than it did ten thousand raindrops ago, and she is as much afraid of floating back up to the surface as she is of staying down below. Because she does not remember if she is capable of breathing above water.

They sit. Together. They are sitting together. Holding hands. Together. For how many heartbeats, she does not know. She loses count. Her body is still shaking. But she can feel her lips again; they have not disappeared. And her fingers are not purple anymore.

"Can I walk you home?" the other woman asks out of the blue. That might be vulnerability hidden there. She does not ask for Helena's name, and if she were to stand and walk away now, she is quite certain that the other woman would make no move to chase her down. She is not trying to yank Helena out of the sea, she's merely tossing down a rope.

Helena's stomach flips over. She nods. She waits for a moment, because she is still wearing this woman's coat, this coat that is like forest of safety. She waits because this is not her coat and she expects it to be removed from her shoulders, and when it isn't, she glances shyly over to see that the woman with a forehead crinkled in thought is not thinking about a jacket. So she stands up, and the taller woman matches her movement smoothly, and she begins to walk forward, hesitantly. Stiffly, on feet that feel like ice cubes and glaciers. They walk together. Hand in hand. Beneath the protection of the umbrella, except it isn't large enough for more than one person. It takes Helena two blocks to realize that the woman's right shoulder is getting drenched.

She tries to move over, but the pressure of the palm against her own keeps her centered beneath the waterproof fabric. Perhaps she shouldn't be showing this woman where she lives. It's a thought that doesn't stick for long, because she _trusts _the person beside her. Trusts her in a way she hasn't trusted a human being in quite some time. She walks, one foot in front of the other. Avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk. Holding hands with a woman is both strong and soft. Whose name she does not know, but desires more than almost anything.

When they arrive at her mailbox, she turns to face the house and the other woman stops immediately as well. The light is on in the front window. Charles - she forgot about Charles - is waiting for her, and suddenly she wants nothing more than to stay out in the rain with this person for the rest of the evening. Forever really. Safe from the rain, safe in this sea they've created for themselves.

Helena needs to let go. Quickly. She unclasps her fingers, but the other woman does not let go immediately. She gives the smaller woman's hand a quick squeeze first, strong. Promising. And _then _she lets go.

"I'll see you tomorrow," it is both a question and a plea.

She wonders when she got so good at reading the inflection in this woman's voice. Because somewhere between, 'hi' and her neighborhood, she has found that she is once more an expert at something. She thought she'd managed to give up that part of her. The part of her that enjoyed the rush she received whenever she solved a particularly difficult puzzle or managed to fit the phrases together perfectly. But this feeling is wonderful, like honey and milk before bed. Tea.

"Okay," except it is not nearly adequate enough for the situation. It will have to do. The woman shoots her a smile, quick like lightning. Then she's walking away, and Helena is watching her walk away, but she feels none of the loss that one normally feels with a goodbye. They have not said goodbye. They've said, 'See you later,' and that makes all the difference.

* * *

**AN: Comments, questions, concerns? But, actually, y'all. These characters and this story are just kind of begging to come out. And I have absolutely no control. Your reviews are so wonderful. Love. **


	8. Chapter 8

**AN - Sorry for the long wait, y'all. Writer's block is a butthead. **

* * *

It's the little things. That's what people are always saying. The little things that matter. She didn't really understand what that meant before. Now, now though, she thinks that she might be starting to understand.

It is a week after the rain storm. Charles has gone back to London and she feels lighter with his absence. The house has gone back to creaking in the wind and in the loneliness. But she does not feel as alone as she did before he came. Now she has someone else. Someone who makes her understand what it means to take pleasure in the little things. In the brush of a thumb across the back of her wrist. A smile that is released from its cage before the owner can clip its wings. The five minutes during which you can't tell if it's daytime or nighttime. A laugh that breaks the stillness of the deepening twilight. These are all little things. And they are beginning to matter a great deal.

They hold hands. While they sit on Helena's bench and watch the shadows chase the light across the grass. It's easy and familiar. Something old friends do. Or lovers. She thinks it should feel wrong, but it doesn't. She still hardly knows this woman. They are still strangers, although each day she learns something new. And each day, the distance between them is less and less.

* * *

That first day, after the clouds had dissipated and moved on to form over someone else's neighborhood, after the rain water had run off into the sewers and the puddles had mostly dried up, Helena had returned to the park in a state that could only be considered one of excited anxiety.

"You forgot this," she indicates the coat placed carefully on the wooden slats beside her.

"Thank you," but the other woman makes no move to pick it up, sitting carefully down on the other side.

Their shoulders are just barely touching, and Helena is not sure whether to lean closer or further away. If they were magnets, it would be obvious, because she would either be attracted or repelled automatically. North to North or South to South, or maybe, if she's lucky North to South. The stuff of fairytales and legends. But they are not binary magnets and this is not a laboratory, and so she holds herself stiffly upright and tries not to move.

"I'm Myka," the name slips past lips she has already come to consider perfect, and there is a sudden release of butterflies where her stomach should be. Doves let free outside the church doors after a wedding. She'd forgotten that feeling.

"Myka," she whispers, turning the word around in her mouth. It's nice. It's beautiful. Myka, like the mineral. Spelled mica. A sheet silicate often glossy and shimmery on its brown surface, but with its fair share of rough patches and uneven textures. Myka like mica. Stunning.

There is a slight bump that brings her back to the present, to the park and the late afternoon light. Myka has hit her shoulder gently with her own. Right, because, "Helena," she manages. She glances quickly to her right and catches a curious hazel stare. She doesn't look away. "I'm Helena."

Myka slips her palm, cold from the autumn chill into Helena's own. There are still crescent impressions on her palm from her fingernails the previous day, but the other woman doesn't seem to notice. She intwines their fingers as though they have not just officially met, as though their hands were made to never be empty, to never be apart. "It's nice to meet you," Myka says seriously.

Helena thinks that proper protocol suggests a handshake in this moment, but instead, she squeezes gently, flexing all of her fingers in unison. She's not sure when she lost the power of touch, when she stopped noticing textures and fabrics, hot and cold, sharp and soft. Her senses have been fading for the past several months. Her sight narrowed until she saw the world as though she was holding binoculars backwards to her eyes. She had trouble hearing individual sound waves, the vibrations tripping over one another, tying themselves in knots on their way to her brain. Her tastebuds fell flat and disused, except for the scalding coffee she swallowed like religion. She had marked the passing of each one with a half-raised hand of farewell and a faint sigh to see it go.

But she does not remember losing touch, that one sense she naively assumed wouldn't leave her. The entire human body is wrapped in layers of skin, and at first, it'd felt as though hers had been sloughed off, introducing a million nerve endings to the harsh atmosphere of the Earth. Yet apparently, even nerves become immune over time; perhaps she welcomed the pain, and in so doing, forgot what it felt like to actually _feel_. Perhaps. But she cannot be sure. Except that touch has, at some point in the not so distant past, deserted her, been left behind on the wayside, without a goodbye, unnoticed.

But she notices now that it's seemingly returned from the abyss, because Myka's hand is smooth in her own. There are callouses on her palm and the inside of her thumb. And Helena delights in the play of skin against her own, even if she is covered by only a delicate layer of protection which might, at any moment be punctured. She closes her eyes because she has forgotten the holiness of physical contact, the power of palm to palm, fingertip to fingertip, and she wants to remember. She _wants _to remember.

* * *

_"Yours is bigger," it's nearly a pout._

_ "Because you're only five years old, little bear," she reminds her daughter gently. Tiny fingers are splayed out against her own, rising only to her first knuckle. _

_ "Your hands are strong, mummy," she says, sounding a bit awestruck._

_ Helena presses forward gently, and the child pushes back in response. "Your hands will be strong as well, my darling."_

_ "Strong enough to catch the stars?"_

_ "The stars? Why would you want to catch them? They're safe up in the sky!"_

_ "Not always," and Christina lays back upon the grass to peer up into the dark infinite. Helena misses the feel of her small palm immediately, but the child raises both hands above her head, as though cupping the entire night sky in her hands. "You said sometimes the stars fall down," she reminds her mother. "Shooting stars."_

_ "I suppose. But we wish on those ones don't we?"_

_ Christina shrugs tiny shoulders, and Helena turns to look at her. She wants to make sure that her daughter believes in magic, at least for several more years. She could tell her that shooting stars are particles of dust and ice burning up as they enter the earth's atmosphere. She could explain the science of it. The force that is gravity, pulling them to their dooms, but she'd much rather her five year old make wishes on their fiery tails and disappearing arcs._

_ "I wish for it."_

_ "For what?"_

_ "For the star that's falling out of the sky." Perhaps she understands more than her mother has told her, and not for the first time, Helena is reminded that this tiny human is brilliant, light years beyond her own stunted adult capacity for understanding._

_ "What do you wish?" She wants to know, even if that means it won't come true. _

_ Christina reaches for her larger hand and lifts it, so her mother, too, is holding up the sky and the millions upon millions of suns light years away. "I wish for strong hands, like yours mumma, so I can catch the star and hang it back up in its place."_

_ "Is that what you wish," but it comes out as no more than a murmur, because now it is her turn to be awestruck._

_ Christina nods easily, a shadow in the night, skin palely shining from the pinpricks of light up in the sky and the glow of their own sun reflected in the moon. "Mhmm. For the falling stars to find home again." She doesn't even know how wonderful she is, and Helena is lost for words that would explain her own brilliance to her._

* * *

Her eyes are still closed as she traces the whorls and patterns of the other woman's - Myka's - fingerprints. She memorizes them, cataloguing the mountains and valleys away for another day, holding the mental image on her retina, neon green and fluorescent pink against the black of the backs of her eyelids. Once she has it, certain it shan't slip away, her eyes flutter open once more, meeting curious green ones, studying her. Myka does not look away, and Helena thinks perhaps she ought to feel embarrassed for some reason - the silence has stretched well beyond social norm - but she doesn't.

Myka's eyes are tired she sees. Deep. Understanding. Older than the wrinkle-free face attests to being. Helena thinks that she is older than this woman beside her, older in so many ways. Bowed down by a century more of living, but at the same time, she feels of an equal age. As though they have the studied the same number of things, breathed the same number of oxygen molecules, hollowed out the same number of tree rings within their bones. She feels her lips move, creeping upwards, fighting the pull of gravity, of hundreds of days of downward curvature. She thinks she might be smiling, even if it is a bare echo of what it once was, she thinks it might count.

And Myka smiles softly in return, her own coming easier, with less effort, less struggle. But it is not smooth. And there is a crack running down it's left side, and Helena wants to point it out, to lift a shaking finger and run it down that crack and ask where it came from, what earthquake shook the soil loose to expose it's naked edge. But that might be rude, might be crossing the boundary between acceptable and not. She isn't certain.

Myka's smile disappears, tucked away behind a once more studious expression. This, Helena recognizes, is the brunette's resting place. Curious. Calm. Controlled. She feels her own half-smile slipping away, but without a mirror, she cannot say what her facial muscles have rearranged themselves to transmit. Except, even if she had a mirror, and even if that mirror were only a simple basin of water with a rippling surface, she is not certain she would be able to pick out her face from a line up.

Charles had looked at her that way for the first several days of the visit: as though she only looked like a woman he had once known very well. And as she'd seen him off that morning, he'd kissed her cheek as one might a stranger you've only just met and are leaving, knowing you'll never see again. Except Myka doesn't look confused or lost; she is looking at Helena as though hers is a face she would recognize anywhere.

"Helena," Myka speaks. "That's a beautiful name."

* * *

_"Oh. Oh," it is the only thing she can say. It isn't even a word really. Technically it's just a single letter, but all other 25 of the english alphabet seem to have slipped away from her as soon as they placed the tiny bundle into her arms. Seven pounds exactly. It seems a crime that such a tiny thing can come into being looking so decidedly perfect. Ten fingers. Ten toes. A nose. A button mouth. Dark eyes, not blue like the books said to expect, but dark and open and staring unblinkingly up at her. Brown hair. So much hair! On a perfect, round head. _

_ She is afraid to move, to breathe, to despoil the innocence that this child is made of. Her very own miracle. She'd scoffed at the new mothers who bespoke their son's or daughter's miracle status. It's the cycle of life. Birth, death. Nothing special. But this-th-this human, this girl _is _special. She is wondrous and wonderful. A miracle. _

_ "Oh," and she strokes a single finger along a downy cheek. "Hullo," three new letters. That's a good sign. "Hullo, my darling." The words are forming on her tongue, but she isn't sure how, because she was certain that the afterlife would be dark and cold and not brimming with joy. But if this isn't Hell than surely this must be the Heaven they preach about. Because life cannot be continuing as usual outside this room. Heaven in the tiny fists of a baby only seventeen minutes old. Heaven in black eyes and downy hair. Heaven in its purest form. _

_ The name comes unbidden to her lips. She hadn't looked through any baby name books, had avoided conversations with colleagues about potential monikers. She wasn't sure what she was expecting, but it wasn't this, this blinding clarity that her daughter's name had been chosen for her, that when she peered down into that chubby, delightful face, the name would spring to her lips as easy as pollen to the bee's stinger. "Hullo, my darling. My Christina."_

* * *

"Thank you," she says, and this time, the smile is not as difficult to find.

* * *

"Do you like literature?" her runner had asked her on the third day.

She had waited, searching the blue skies for an answer, as though a plane might appear, dragging a banner behind in its wake. Yes! or No! One or the other. "I think so," is the only thing she can discern from the single cloud's fluffy whiteness.

Myka cocks her head, as though she's considering whether or not laughter is an appropriate response.

"I used to," she amends.

And the brunette nods as though this is an easier answer to understand.

"Books are...dangerous." She does not say that their words are fraught with sharp edges and dastardly twists and turns, that they pull her up onto a cliff she has no way of descending, leaving her there, stranded, to be buffeted about by an invisible wind. She does not tell Myka that books are confusing and she is unsure how to follow their convoluted maps. Beginning and Middle and End are terms she cannot decipher. So she sticks with dangerous, its multiple syllables challenge enough for the moment.

"My middle name is Ophelia," Myka announces quickly, as if the two women've been sharing intimate details for years, and this is the last piece Helena needs to finish a 1000 piece puzzle. "My father owns a bookshop," and this is meant to explain everything; it very nearly does. "Bering & Sons - that's what it's called. But there were never any sons. Just me and my younger sister. I'm not sure he ever recovered from the disappointment." She laughs, but it is not the chime of church bells Helena has come to associate with her laughter. Her eyes have gone hazy and distant, a shade darker than sage.

Helena bends over, lifting a single orange leaf from beneath the bench. She hands it to the other woman, the delicate veins cutting jagged lines through the leaf's skin. "In Autumn, the green chlorophyll stops production as the hours of sunlight wane." She knows this, but she lets Helena explain it anyway. "And it's not that the leaves are dying, or that they are suddenly inadequate. The new buds will come back green with the springtime." This isn't an answer to take away the pain Myka so obviously feels at her father's rejection, but it is _an _explanation. Of what, well, Helena is not quite certain.

Myka takes the leaf almost reverently, and spins it by its stem. "I always thought they were more beautiful when they changed," she admits. "The reds and the oranges and the yellows. It's nature painting."

"Yes," Helena agrees breathlessly, "Yes, exactly."

* * *

_The bell above the door dings as Christina makes a beeline for the back of the shop and the children's section where there are both books _and _toys. "Easy, Chris," she calls gently. "Walk, please."_

_ "Morning, Ms. Wells!"_

_ "Morning, John. It's Helena, please."_

_ "Back already?"_

_ "We finished the last _Time Warp Trio _last night and I promised we'd come get something new first thing."_

_ He laughs. "Well you know the way," he indicates the path her daughter has taken through the bookshelves._

_ "I do," she laughs as well, shaking her head as if to say, 'Children.' She is probably his best customer. She could simply take her daughter to the library, check the books out for free, and return them after they have been devoured, but she prefers to keep them, turning their pages reverently time after time. And Helena understands, because she feels the same way; there is no feeling that compares to cracking the spine of a new novel, breathing in its ink and glue and virgin pages, and knowing that it is yours to escape into whenever you need to. _

_ "Mummy, come see!" her youthful voice calls from some unseen location. "I think I found the next series!"_

_ "Already?" she grumbles, but she follows the sound anyway. "I'm coming, darling. I'm coming!"_

* * *

Myka must run earlier now because she takes her seat on the bench beside Helena wearing jeans and the jacket she wore the first day they actually spoke. She wears her hair in a ponytail and Helena is not sure how to ask that she wear it down and loose about her shoulders, flyaway curls going every which way. Myka always looks a bit more tense when she's got her hair pulled back, as though she's just stepped out of the office for a brief break, and is ready to dive back in at any moment. Although Helena is not sure what the other woman actually does. She works for the government, yes, but that is all she knows. And she finds that she is curious. She _wants _to know.

Curiosity may have killed the cat, and tied it up in a burlap sack and tossed it over the bridge into the river, but Helena has spent the past several months drowning. She is not frightened of a bit of water in her lungs. And so she wonders, in the hours between visits, between their conversations, she wonders. She drinks her coffee black, and she leaves her mail, unopened and unwanted on the kitchen counter, she sleeps naked in her bed because the house doesn't care and the ghosts don't peak, she showers, delighting in the scalding heat, she forgets breakfast and so eats a bagel, dry, on her way out the door. But even as she does these things, she wonders.

She lives in both an empty house and on the five blocks between it and the park, but she only feels alive while she's sitting on a bench that once was painted green and is now brown with age, beside a woman with runaway curls and green eyes that tell a thousand and one stories. She wonders in silence, but she gets answers, slowly but surely. Handed to her cupped in the palm of this woman's hands. And she holds the answers close, sewing them reverently into the lining of her sweaters, into the lines zigzagging across her own palm, placing them in the empty spaces of her ribcage for safekeeping, and the cracks in her heart to protect them.

"His name was Sam."

It is the seventh day. _And on the Seventh Day, the Lord rested. _

Helena opens up her chest and prepares the space between her fourth and fifth ribs on the left side. There is room there, plenty of it, because she can tell already, that this is the answer to something she has been wondering for far longer than seven days.

"His name was Sam," Myka repeats, and there it is, the answer to the sadness swirling in her eyes.

Helena does not speak.

"And I loved him," the other woman's voice is not shaking, she is not stuttering, but rather is speaking clearly. Even so, Helena can recognize the loose façade the other woman is resting beneath, and the ease with which it could be blown away.

She wants to shut herself off, to curl into a ball around the name Sam and to forget everything else. She wants to ask Myka not to continue because the name is enough; she does not need to hear anymore. The rest of the story is already floating above their heads in a black cloud of agony and anguish. She wants to ask the sun to come out because the sky is gray and overcast and stories such as these are not meant to be told in the sunshine. It is a protective mechanism. A woman who has avoided the sun for months because its brightness was too overwhelming, now begging for its brilliance to stave off the pain in her partner's eyes.

Partner. She gets sidetracked by the word, the title, and before she can stop herself, she has tilted her head in acquiescence. Fight or flight. She will not fly. She will stay. Here is the story she has been wondering about, the least she can do is remain grounded long enough to listen and remember.

It's funny, the things one is willing and able to endure for others. Because there is a name she possesses, holds close to her chest, that is capable of tearing her limb from limb. A beautiful, devastating name, and she is in no way strong enough to bear it. But this name, Myka's name, the name that haunts her and weighs on her as gravity might on Jupiter, this name, Helena is able to stomach, to carry.

"His name was Sam," and the third time makes it final, a solid weight settling upon both of their laps. "And he was early. But I was late," she bites her lip. "And I loved him."

There are no birds chirping, and with a start, Helena realizes that they've settled themselves back at the bottom of the sea, back in the darkness, millions of tons of water sloshing about above them. Except this time, there is the faintest pinprick of light reaching them from the sky kilometers overhead, glancing down like the sun through motes of spinning dust.

Myka speaks low and soft, her words coming in fits and starts, and Helena doesn't interrupt. Helen wonders if this is the first time Myka has released these words, birds into the air, fish into the sea, air bubbles traveling up to the surface to release their small pockets of oxygen. And she wonders if there is a tiny part of Myka that is telling the story not for herself, but for Helena. And she wonders idly if this is what connection means: telling your story for someone else, and knowing they will listen.

"We were on assignment in Denver. I work for the Secret Service." Is that supposed to be privileged information? Helena isn't sure. "I hadn't been working for long; the guys still considered me a newborn on the job. Sam was a senior officer. And he and I, well, we were ... together." She isn't blushing, but Helena thinks that perhaps, if this were any other tale, Myka's cheeks would be tinged pink at the admission, a tale with a happy ending. "And there was a job in Denver. I organized it. Time tables, made sure everyone knew their position, the mark, the target." She is gone, her hazel eyes searching out some far distant place back in Colorado, and Helena is left alone on the bench in Washington D.C. "Except I was late getting to my mark." She'd alluded before that Sam may have been early, but Helena sees now that Myka does not believe in such a possibility, even if it might be tinged with truth. "He-he died." Helena wonders how they have avoided being crushed; that much water weighing down above them should have forced the space out from between their individual atoms long ago, reducing them to nothingness. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. But can it be erased? "I loved him, but I was late."

It's the little things. These moments. These little moments. She is starting to understand.

There are tears on Myka's cheeks, cracks of crystal running across her pale skin. Diamonds are one of the hardest substances on earth, and only the sharpest saws are capable of changing the facets of one's surface. But grief is the sharpest saw. Regret. Emptiness. Emptiness most of all. Helena sticks her hand out and a single, solitary salt water droplet drips from Myka's stubborn chin to fall into her outstretched palm, a single, solitary diamond, worth more than all the gems still hidden beneath the earth's surface. The englishwoman rolls the tear about her palm until its molecules separate into a million separate atoms and evaporate, gone in the blink of an eye, in seven thousand heartbeats, and the single ticking of a clock man has ordered to beat in a certain rhythm.

She looks up to meet a bleary gaze, still looking heavy with hurt. Helena thinks that she is incomplete. That once upon a time she was whole, that there was a name that made her feel love and gratitude and wondrous delight, but that name has been lost in red. And now she is splintered and cracked, bits of her left behind with every step, every movement. Except Myka is looking at her, actually looking at her. No one has looked at her that way in many of the moon's lifetimes, as though there is a piece of her worth giving, a piece of her that might come in handy, that is needed, wanted. So, with a tremendous heave, she pulls out one of the few fragments of herself that she has left, poking out from beneath her lungs, and she holds it gently in her palm, and she reaches with a steady hand to place the shard against Myka's pale cheek, her imperfect splinter against the diamonds still dripping from the other woman's dark green eyes. This is all she has to offer, but Myka has asked, in telling her story, in giving her diamonds away, and so she places it there, softly against the silent woman's pale skin. "I was late, too." And the light shining down from above, cutting through kilometers of seawater and saltwater tears and diamonds, illuminating the dust motes spinning madly, is suddenly shining a bit brighter. "I was late, too."


End file.
